Review
Review
Inside Inhaler’s Valentine’s Day gig at Brixton Academy
Inhaler feel the love as they take their third album on the road ahead of their summer festival dates
Towards the end of the blistering ‘Dublin In Ecstasy’, Inhaler’s vocalist Eli Hewson abandoned the stage of London’s O2 Academy Brixton and headed to the front row of the sold-out crowd. He passed the microphone to one ecstatic fan to finish out the song but before they could let rip, he gave them a little pep talk. “You’ve got to really f*cking go for it.” Not a single person in the room needed telling twice.
See, Inhaler have always inspired a certain degree of reckless abandon. Their 2021 debut album It Won’t Always Be Like This was full of festival-ready guitar anthems while 2023’s follow-up Cuts & Bruises saw the band bring a touch of pop to their riff-driven arsenal. Third album Open Wide continued that evolution and, despite only being released earlier this month, already feels like the most assured version of the band.
That confidence could be felt throughout the second of two headline shows at Brixton Academy on Friday. Opening track ‘My Honest Face’ continued the indie disco that was started by a pre-gig playlist featuring artists such as Arctic Monkeys and Oasis. The fancy light show and dynamic staging would come into play later to give more reflective tracks ‘A Question Of You’ and ‘Totally’ a sense of theatre, but to start things off, it was just the band and their music. By the time the first chorus took hold, the entire venue was jumping.
Inhaler immediately switched things up with the lush ‘Eddie In The Darkness’ and spent the rest of the night jumping between rowdy mosh-pit anthems and more blissed out tracks. The searing ‘Little Things’ caused carnage while the country-tinged ‘X-Ray’ was a gorgeous moment of unity. There was a real sense of play to this dance, while a pretty ‘Valentine’ was dedicated to “all the boyfriends dragged here by their girlfriends”.
New tracks ‘Open Wide’ and ‘Billy (Yeah Yeah Yeah)’ were bellowed back to the band with deafening enthusiasm while ‘Love Will Get You There’ and ‘Cheer Up Baby’ saw the already excitable crowd finding new levels of pandemonium. Through it all, Inhaler delivered defiant optimism. Tracks such as ‘It Won’t Always Be Like This’ were uplifting but also a reminder to treasure those moments of communal joy.
While the opening minutes of the gig saw Inhaler take things back to basics, the closing, gospel-tinged ‘Your House’ saw the band continue to take risks and push things forward. A spiritual, arena-ready track about belonging, delivered with a whole lot of synths, it was a deliberate nod to what comes next. After all, Inhaler are a band who aren’t interested in half measures.
Photos: Lewis Evans
