12 Interviews of Christmas – Inhaler: "I'm really honoured to be part of what feels like another glory age for Irish bands and Irish culture in general"

Originally published in Hot Press in February 2025:

The last time I was enthusiastically man hugged by Inhaler – Elijah has a particularly firm squeeze – was at a shade after five o’clock on Saturday June 10, 2023. The chart-topping Dublin quartet were about to warm up 80,000 Harry Styles fans at Slane Castle, a moment captured on the Hot Press-curated Uprising TV show, which can still be watched on the Virgin Media Player.

Asked whether it was an adrenaline buzz playing to so many people, young Mr. Hewson smiles and says, “I wish it was adrenaline but it was more dread and fear. I was shitting myself and expecting people to throw shoes or Harry Styles hats at us but the crowd could not have been warmer. They made us feel welcome, which isn’t always the case when you’re opening for a massive act whose fans are only there to see them.”

“It was mad getting to Slane,” bassist Robert Keating takes over. “We were stuck in traffic and in real danger of missing our stage time, so somebody said to a Guard, ‘Is there any way we could get an escort?’ He was like, ‘I don’t know… who’s in there? Inhaler? Oh, I don’t mind them…’ So a flashing lights escort was arranged and we got there in the end with a bit of a time to spare.”

Which they very kindly spent with yours truly who was also shitting himself because he’d never done this roving telly reporter thing before.

Although Harry Styles is the first Slane he can remember, Elijah had been there before with his dad and his mates.

“Yeah, I was in my pushchair when U2 did their two Slane shows in 2001,” he laughs. “I was really little so don’t remember anything about it but, yeah, I suppose that makes me a Slane veteran.”

Nervous or not, Inhaler worked the massive Slane stage as if it were their name on top of the poster. Elijah credits a certain Sheffield rock star with showing them how it should be done.

“Alex Turner has, as the kids would say, that sauce,” he says. “All of the Arctic Monkeys have this aura but him more so. With all he’s achieved he could be up his own arse, but Alex is very quiet, kind, humble and genuine. If you’re looking for an example of how to deal with fame and not succumb to the ridiculousness of the music industry, he’s it.”

“He’s probably the last frontman to have that old school mystique about him,” drummer Ryan McMahon ventures. “We did shows with the Arctic Monkeys before Slane and – this is going to sound weird – he just radiated this energy and seemed to float around the place. It was really peculiar.”

Slane well and truly slayed, Inhaler embarked on the sort of never ending tour that Bob Dylan, more of whom anon, would approve of. It included a stop-off at Omaha’s Memorial Park where they opened for another member of rock royalty, Roger Daltrey.

“He was on cloud nine that day, just flying,” guitarist Josh Jenkinson recalls. “He gave us one of the best pieces of advice we’ve ever been given, which is put your t-shirt in the fridge before you go on!”

Were they au fait with The Who’s back catalogue?

“Yeah, I found myself going down that rabbit-hole a few years ago,” Ryan says. “‘Boris The Spider’ I can’t get enough off but I wasn’t so keen on them when things got theatre-y. Pinball wizards and all of that.

“As a drummer you can’t not love Keith Moon who I get the impression was certifiably insane.”

Their US travels also took them to the Stone Pony, the legendary Noo Joisey venue where Bruce and the E Street Band cut their plectrums in the early ‘70s.

“You can feel him in the walls,” Robert says. “Bruce had just played there on an outside stage – I think he does it every year – so he’s stayed true to his Asbury Park roots. We wouldn’t have been the biggest Springsteen fans but saw him for the first time last year and, boy, did he live up to the hype. I’ve never seen a band where there’s such a chemistry between its members.”

“We were like, ‘Who puts the batteries in this guy?!’” Ryan adds. “We missed the first thirty minutes because of the horrendous queues outside Croker which would normally be the night ruined, but when we entually got in there was still three hours left.

“I’m probably the only person in the world who it was still news to,”

Robert confesses, “but about two-thirds of the way through I was like, ‘Oh my god, Steve Van Zandt is Silvio from The Sopranos!”

Inhaler made it a triple-whammy of rock gods when just before Christmas they caught Paul McCartney in Manchester’s Co-Op Arena.

“He comes on, launches straight into ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ and you’re like, ‘Fucking hell, this is God!’” Ryan marvels.

“I thought that at this stage of his life he might be going through the motions a bit but, oh my god, he was so into it!” Robert says. “That new old Beatles song, ‘Now And Then’ was class as was ‘Blackbird’ which he did on his own. I felt like a giggly girl during the ‘60s!”

Inhaler also found time in 2024 to record their third album, Open Wide, which like its It Won’t Always Be Like This and Cuts & Bruises predecessors went straight to number one this month in Ireland and has also been doing brisk business overseas.

It’s the first time they’ve worked with Kid Harpoon, the hotshot English producer whose CV also includes Florence + The Machine, Shakira, Jessie Ware, Miley Cyrus, Lizzo and a Mr. H. Styles of Redditch in Worcestershire. What did he bring to the party?

“A lot of great jokes – he’s very funny – and a slightly different way of thinking,” Elijah reflects. “One of the things he said to us was, ‘Trust your first instincts’. He very much wanted to stay true to the demos rather than over-thinking things. He also said that, ‘I don’t want any outside involvement. It’s just the five of us making a great album that we all love.’ Which we do.”

Nodding furiously, Ryan adds: “We went to Los Angeles for two weeks to meet him and do a trial run in case he thought the songs were crap and/or we hated each other.

“Having always worked before with the same producer, Antony Genn, there was a nervous first-day-at-school energy going into the studio but thankfully it was all good.”

“Although he did tell us in no uncertain terms that some of the songs we’d written on tour weren’t finished,” Robert notes. “Instead of plámásing us, he got the whip out and made us up our game.”

“We were in L.A. again a couple of months ago when it wasn’t too hot or too dry,” Elijah picks up. “One of the things we did was go on a massive hike through Runyon Canyon in West Hollywood, which we saw burning the other day on TV. You probably need to know the city a little bit to appreciate how much of it has been devastated. It’s so incredibly sad.”

Having established that, yes, they could be in the same room without insults or punches being traded, Inhaler and Kid Harpoon decamped to London’s RAK Studios.

“You can make music pretty much anywhere, but lyrically I need to be on my own with a few days of nothingness beforehand to get into the zone,” Elijah resumes. “I’m really happy that he had that word with us in L.A. about some of the songs needing more work because when we went into RAK we had all our ducks in a row and nailed it.”

Indeed they did with, to these ears, ‘The Charms’ and ‘X-Ray’ being two of the best things Inhaler have ever done.

If Open Wide also has a bit of a New York City feel – ‘Your House’ sounds like primetime LCD Soundsystem while ‘All I Got Is You’ jangles along in classic Strokes/Vampire Weekend fashion – it’s probably down to all the time Messrs. Hewson and Keating have been spending there.

“Rob and I’s girlfriends both live in Manhattan,” Elijah reveals.

“Yeah, our ball and chains,” Keating laughs before quickly adding: “Don’t use that as one of the pull-quotes or I’ll be in big trouble! I call her that to her face as a joke but out of context in bold type it mightn’t have the same comedy value.”

“Surely it has to be the headline or, better still, on the cover?” suggests Ryan who clearly has scant regard for his friend’s romantic wellbeing.

“Our loved ones both live on the Lower Eastside,” Robert corrects himself, “so we’ve gotten to know that neighbourhood really well. The East Village is great – you still get Andy Warhol vibes from it – and we hang out in Brooklyn quite a bit as well.”

“Yeah, I saw LCD Soundsystem at Brooklyn Steel which was amazing,” Elijah enthuses. “The second you get off the plane there’s this sense of expectation. I love spending time at home when I’m in Ireland but over there I feel a lot more extroverted. Everyone knows everyone else in Dublin whereas you can go out in New York and be anonymous. My girlfriend’s got four flatmates so it’s a bit of a madhouse!”

Sounds like Elijah’s starring in his own rock ‘n’ roll version of Friends.

“James Murphy has a restaurant in Williamsburg called The Four Horseman, AKA the LCD Winesystem, which I went to the other day,” Robert adds. “Very hipster and very good.”

Elijah’s romantic attachment has prompted his first overt love song, ‘A Question Of You’.

“With the playfulness of the beat I didn’t at any point think, ‘This is too much!” he says ever so slightly blushing. “It just felt right. It’s actually a bit of a nasty, fucking selfish love song. That’s what we wanted to explore on this album. Love is something you walk into knowing that it’s a place where you can be hurt. You’re opening yourself up. A lot of love songs are a warm hug and ‘everything’s great’ but giving a part of yourself to another human being is both a lot of responsibility and an invitation to getting yourself hurt. So, yeah, it’s a bit of a recurring theme on the record.”

Does the kid in a sweetshop allure of being in a successful band diminish a bit when you’re having to say “goodbye” to loved ones for months on end?

“I miss my girlfriend and New York but at the same time still feel very wide-eyed about Inhaler,” Elijah proffers. “I don’t feel we’ve gotten near to what we’d like to achieve in the future, which is a huge driving force and as strong as ever.”

“Since we were kids, music was the dream, the pinnacle, and it doesn’t feel like it’ll ever not be our number one thing,” Robert insists. “The feeling you get from creating it is like a drug you can never get enough of.”

Does life on the road make you grow up or arrest your development?

“Arrests your development!” four voices chime in unison.

“Being away from your friends and family for long periods naturally matures you and we’ve a responsibility towards our crew and the people coming to see us , but we’re still partying way too much, behaving like sixteen-year-olds and getting away with it!” Robert expands.

Like most right-minded people Inhaler are massive Kneecap fans and feel better informed about the North because of them.

“I didn’t know what to expect from the film but it blew my mind,” Robert says. “None of them had acted before and there they were holding their own opposite Michael Fassbender. It’s incredibly dark in places but also very, very funny.”

“To be funny you need to be intelligent, which they clearly are,” Elijah adds. “What I saw recently and really liked is The Wind That Shakes The Barley. I’d heard Paul Mescal talking about the film and Cillian Murphy’s role in it and he’s right – it’s a masterpiece.”

Were they taught Troubles-era history when they were at school together at St. Andrew’s College in Blackrock?

“A hundred per cent,” Robert nods. “It feels like we were taught that more than anything.”

“You’re not taught about it in England, are you?” Elijah.

Nope, for some reason Britain’s genocidal mistreatment of Ireland never came up when I was in secondary school.

What did the chaps make of Mo Chara, Móglaí Bap and DJ Próvai leading last year’s Irish boycott of South By Southwest due to the US Army a ‘super sponsor’.

“It’s good that they’re using their platform to speak out for the things they believe in,” Elijah says. “Our stance on politics is that we’ve always wanted our music to be a place of hope and optimism. We use it to switch off from what’s going on and have fun, but at the same time there’s something to be said for using it to stand up to things. If we were to do that, we’d need a conversation with each other first. We wouldn’t go into it blind.”

“I think Eli’s right,” Robert concurs. “It’s important to have bands who operate in that space, like Kneecap do, and also important to have bands where you don’t feel like you’re picking a side or doing anything other than focusing on a piece of art. Go to a gallery and there are plenty of amazing pieces which have nothing to do with anything and are just beautiful.”

“About SXSW, I thought it was very brave of those bands – especially the smaller ones who’d spent all their money getting there and could really have done with the exposure – to pull out,” Josh opines. .

“I’m really optimistic about Ireland’s future as a moral leader,” Elijah says. “In so much of the world people are being taken hostage by ideology, crazy fucking leaders and shit like that. Whereas through art and through music, Ireland feels like a place you want to be.”

Before doing the media rounds, do the guys sit down and work out a collective response to the Trump, Israel, Gaza etc. etc. questions they’re inevitably going to be asked?

“We should but, no, never,” Josh responds. “One of the weird things I’ve experienced in America is that you see a lot of politics on the news but day-to-day people don’t really talk about it. We were in Oakland when Kamala Harris lost to Trump. People were quite sad but you didn’t hear anybody giving out about it on the street. They seem very detached from it all, which is the exact opposite of the media coverage.”

“There’s a lot of stigma attached to Middle America,” Elijah ventures, “but we’ve met some of the nicest super-genuine people in red states who are upset with the way things are. You have to recognise that. To just shun it is probably why Trump’s winning.”

Rewinding to the Middle East, would a band meeting be required if they were offered a gig in Israel?

“I think we’d all have an answer…” Josh starts.

“Which is that we probably wouldn’t be going over to that side of the world to do gigs,” Robert finishes.

Were they here when the racist Dublin riots happened?

“Yeah, I was heading into town to meet friends for dinner when the bus stopped and I saw what was going on, which was fucking outrageous,” Ryan rues. “What it initially stemmed from and how it finished feeds into what Eli was saying about people getting sucked into and trapped by ideologies that are damaging and dangerous.”

“With the internet everything’s become a little bit more tribal,” Elijah resumes. “Everybody’s got their own version of reality and it’s so easy to get triggered by something. They’re farming you for not just what you like but also what you hate. That’s what keeps you engaged which, to me, seems apocalyptic.”

Given that his sister Eve Hewson sang in last year’s Flora And Son movie, will Elijah be retaliating by pursuing an acting career?

“There haven’t been any film offers – well, not that my manager’s told me about!” he laughs. “I thought Eve did a great job. She was always musically inclined and used to be in a band – I can’t remember what they were called – with her friend. She also played Guitar Hero at expert level. Having put so much into it, she feels really satisfied with the acting work she’s doing – and rightly so.”

Quick pop quiz; favourite movies!

Eli: “Inglorious Basterds.”

Ryan: “I never read as a kid but watched loads of films with Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid the one I keep coming back to.”

Josh: “Shaun Of The Dead. Simon Pegg is a hero and the soundtrack’s great too.”

Robert: “The Princess Bride just about nudges it.”

Eve has talked about the forming of a Hewson sibling band during lockdown. Any chance of their Killiney jam sessions being made available for public consumption?

“‘Band’ is a bit of a stretch,” Eli laughs. “It was more of a seisiún with a microphone and will not be available in all good record shops!”

With him baring more than a passing resemblance to the teenage Dylan and singing for a living, I’m surprised that James Mangold didn’t hit Elijah up before handing the A Complete Unknown lead to Timothée Chalamet.

“I was very upset about that,” Eli deadpans. “No, the film’s great and he nails the part – five minutes in and you’d swear he’s Bob.

“I’d never really gotten into Dylan until the pandemic when I had time to go down that rabbit hole and really liked it there. Blood On The Track, which is such a great breakup record, is probably my favourite but there’s so much to explore.”

My introduction to Inhaler was in June 2019 when they opened for Noel Gallagher at Malahide Castle. The moment Eli & Co. hit the boards, a swarm of sharply dressed teenagers pressed their way to the front and proceeded to go none too quietly apeshit for the next half-hour.

Despite Richard Ashcroft and Cast bagging the supports this time round, are the lads hoping to be in Croke Park in August when Noel returns to Dublin with his baby brother?

“Our manager, Simon, is involved in the reunion so if we’re going to get tickets it’ll be through him,” Ryan says. “The second of Oasis’ Dublin shows is on Eli’s birthday so we’ve something to emotionally blackmail him with!”

“I also saw Liam Gallagher and John Squire in Brooklyn, which was class,” Robert enthuses. “Previous to that we were rehearsing in Macclesfield and, without warning us, Simon turned up with John Squire who he goes way back with and lives locally. I was like, ‘I’d better not fuck up with him standing here!’”

As a journalist, I’m hugely disappointed that we haven’t been able to concoct an Inhaler/Fontaines D.C. beef à la Blur vs. Oasis.

“We tour the same places and bump into each other quite a bit, but if there’s a rivalry – which I don’t really think there is – it’s a friendly one,” Robert maintains.

Have Inhaler ever been tempted to go the Simone Rocha man dress route and express their feminine side?

“That remains to be seen,” Elijah teases. “I’d never look as good as Grian does in one of Simone’s creations, though. I’m just really honoured to be part of what feels like another glory age for Irish bands and Irish culture in general.”