Imagine if you took a picture of your heart outside your chest and the very next day, more than 3,000 people were wearing it on a chain around their neck. This goes some way to describing how Inhaler must be feeling as they’re pumped on stage to find that the lyrics of their new album Open Wide, their lifeblood of the last two years, are already safely stored beneath every fan’s ribcage – just one day after they sent it out into the world.

The enemy of these songs is wasted time. If there’s something you’ve been dying to say to someone, throw your arms around them and whisk them into every word. And, if you’re going to do it, you may as well say it while wearing a cowboy hat or indeed a t-shirt boasting ‘I heart Bobby Skeetz’.

With this no holding back policy in mind, it seems fitting to begin the night with ‘My Honest Face.’ Tradition would typically see this track close the curtains on the evening, or, more accurately, kick the mic stand to the ground. Now however, its stadium-scraping feverishness has become too big of an itch to wait until the end of the set.

The thrashing ‘Eddie In The Darkness’ and glitzy ‘A Question of You’ prove that Open Wide has more than earned its flowers with audiences – whether it’s crawling through headphones or sprouting full-force from amplifiers. Although, based on tonight’s reaction, it’s apparent that live shows are where Inhaler tunes truly come to thrive. Atmosphere flirts with that of a karaoke bar nearing its last orders as arms are slung over shoulders, pulling friends and strangers into a sweaty embrace; “arms out open wide.”

Hot against their skin are 2021’s slices of abandon and bliss ‘Totally’ and ‘When It Breaks’. Both tracks belong to the band’s debut album It Won’t Always Be Like This, although at this point, you can’t help but wish with your whole soul that it could. The room is practically doing pirouettes.

Elsewhere in the set, Elijah Hewson introduces their sibling song ‘Cheer Up Baby’ by announcing “this is an old one,” which is concert code for: if you were here when this one was new, thanks for sticking around. It’s hard to believe a song from an album that came out only four years ago is considered “old,” but given how much they’ve packed in between now and then, it really does feel it. It’s a welcome throwback that could easily be a decade-spanning anthem. An old friend of a tune you’d swear you were born knowing the words too. Fittingly, it poses, “oh how to cure these February blues?”

‘Little Things’ drops pillars of shamrock green light from the ceiling to place the band somewhere between here, an earthly rave and an Irish Olympus. Both this and ‘X-Ray’ are potentially the group’s most rock-bitten tunes to date, so it makes sense they’d rattle the room like a shaken can. In contrast, the band themselves do not appear rattled. They look like everything they’ve ever wanted to be. Like all the posters that likely adorned their childhood walls. Like rockstars – shades and all.

Cool as you like, ‘X-Ray’ growls “I will chain myself to your soul.” A guitar-addled threat turned promise, as you already know you’ll have a hard time unravelling yourself from theirs.

There comes a point in every Inhaler show where an Irish flag must be held up like a Bat-signal. From the centre of each and every crowd, one brave silhouette always rises lest anybody forget that they’re watching imported goods. Except, instead of calling for a hero to save the day, it calls for four instrument-shaped men to play ‘Dublin In Ecstasy.’ The crowd undulates as one, swishing as if they’re hung from a mast in a storm. Caught on hooks to cause withdrawals.

With ‘My Honest Face’ shimmying out early on, a new encore creeps into the hush. ‘Open Wide’. A kiss and a punch. It’s the kind of moment that if you listen too close could bring tears to your eyes but instead, through all the dancing, trickles over you like raindrops or petals. A flying favourite already. Hewson throws his arms out to the room; you’d swear he was holding the walls together.

‘Your House’ brings the night to a spirited end. Just one, big, gospel choir, hearts outside their chests, February blues successfully cured to oxygen red. It was their house tonight.