Gig review: Inhaler at O2 Academy Leeds
The Dublin band launch their new album in Leeds with a raucous but polished set.
Inhaler chose Leeds for the first gig of their 2025 tour and the Dublin four piece augmented live by keyboard player Louis Lambert, demonstrated their confidence in the new album Open Wide by playing seven of its songs during their seventeen-song set.
The overwhelmingly young capacity crowd had obviously spent release day learning the lyrics and filled the O2 Academy with enthusiastic singing from start to finish.
The band, Elijah Hewson on lead guitar and vocals, guitarist Josh Jenkinson, bassist Robert Keating and drummer Ryan McMahon formed the band at school in 2012 and, whilst there is no denying Hewson’s vocal resemblance to his dad Bono, they have become a formidable live act, with their own style and sound honed by years of hard work and relentless touring.
The support act were fellow Irishmen, post-punk band The Gurriers, recently championed by BBC Radio 6 Music’s Steve Lamacq, and they built the excitement perfectly for Inhaler to bounce onto the stage, accompanied by screams and launch into My Honest Face from their 2021 debut album It Doesn’t Always Have to Be Like This.
They followed this with new songs Eddie in the Darkness, which was tight and melodic, and the extremely dance -able A Question of You, which typified the sound of what has been described as their most joyous, melodic and sonically ambitious album to date.
Sounding tight and with Hewson in fine voice, two other songs from the new album, the gentle X-Ray and Billy (Yeah, Yeah Yeah), a great song with a thumping low bass, made their live debuts, each one being greeted as enthusiastically as their better-known tracks.
The venue stewards had long given up their losing battle to keep the crowd away from the balcony barrier and Who’s Your Money On turned into a mass danceathon as Inhaler charged through song after song – a highlight for me being Love Will Get You There from 2023’s Cuts and Bruises with Robert Keating’s driving bass line.
Ending the main set with Just to Keep You Satisfied, with its crunching guitars and La, La, La refrain, the band returned for a three-song encore. 2023’s It Won’t Always Be Like This was sandwiched between new songs Open Wide and Your House with its pounding drums, and guitars reminiscent of Norman Greenbaum’s Spirit in the Sky (a comparison which in this audience made me feel very old!). They were all lapped up by the crowd.
Inhaler looked absolutely thrilled by the night’s reception, lingering on stage at the end with Hewson saying, “Thanks Leeds, see you later.” I certainly hope so!