Inhaler talk about their second album the way most people talk about surviving dental surgery: painful, but worth it. “We only had a few weeks to write it,” they insist, before correcting themselves—“well, a decent amount of time, but only because we sacrificed our days off.” Translation: tour, studio, repeat until delirium. “There are 27 hours in a day when you work in our studio,” one of them jokes.
The record in question, Cuts and Bruises, is their “sophomore album”—a phrase they’ve heard so many times they practically flinch at it. Still, they’re happy it’s become a rite of passage.
What actually came out of those stolen hours is a record obsessed with looking backward, even as the band hurtles forward. Nostalgia drips from it like condensation on a pint glass. “Nobody’s really said that to us yet,” they admit when pressed, “but yeah, there’s a lot of nostalgia in there. Even Dublin in Ecstasy feels like looking backwards.” That song itself is a comeback story—written for their debut, rejected by the band, championed by fans until Inhaler finally believed them. “We knew the fans were right,” they shrug. “We just didn’t know how to portray it for a while.”
The way they talk about riffs and throwaways, you’d think they were running a salvage yard. The jagged bridge of “Just to Keep You Satisfied” nearly became its own track. “We love breaks and middle-eights more than the rest of the song,” they laugh. Neil Young and Paul McCartney come up as inspirations, mostly for their habit of letting a riff disappear into the ether and trusting it’ll come back years later. “Dylan says if a song doesn’t come quick, he just destroys it in his head. I’m sure that can’t be true.”
If there’s a theme, it’s that their youth is already something to be longed for. “We’ve been together for ten years,” they remind you, which is obscene considering they’re barely mid-20s. They compare notes on Seinfeld binges during lockdown and sound like people who just discovered mortality.
But there’s also joy here, especially in the bizarre new tradition of cowboy hats being lobbed onstage. “It started in America,” they say, “and by the end of tour we had a thousand cowboy hats on the bus. Our tour manager was like, ‘What the fuck are we gonna do with these?’” So they handed them back to fans, who’d already been camping outside venues overnight to stake their spot. “It’s a community,” the band says. “We’re like, you’re nuts for doing that, but it’s lovely.”
The community, the nostalgia, the riffs that almost slip away but don’t—it all feeds into the mythology Inhaler are starting to build around themselves. And if Cuts and Bruises proves anything, it’s that they’re willing to let fans steer the ship when needed. “Sometimes you have to consult your past in order to figure out your future,” they say, apologizing for how “stupid” it sounds. It doesn’t. It sounds exactly like a band learning how to grow up in public.
Watch the interview above and then check out the video below.
