Inhaler have dropped their own indie-tinged version of the viral Lola Young hit, ‘Messy’. Check it out below.
The Dublin band performed the hit track from the former NME Cover Star as they recently made a stop at the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge as part of their promo tour – celebrating the release of third album ‘Open Wide’.
While at the Live Lounge, the band chose ‘Messy’ as the track they’d cover, putting an anthemic, indie spin on the massive hit. They also broke out a rendition of their track ‘A Question Of You’ while on the show – a single which features in their newly shared album.
Check out both live performances of the songs below.
Their cover of ‘Messy’ follows the song becoming a viral sensation in recent months and inspiring a dance trend on TikTok that has been seen in over 250,000 videos.
The song topped the charts in the UK, and has climbed to Number 24 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US. It featured on Young’s 2024 debut album ‘This Wasn’t Meant For You Anyway’ and landed her a feature on Tyler, The Creator’s huge ‘Chromakopia’ album last year.
As for Inhaler, ‘Open Wide’ was shared today (February 7) and followed yesterday’s release of the final single ‘Billy (Yeah Yeah Yeah)’.
Speaking to NME last October, bassist Robert Keating explained how the group had entered new territory on their third record. “While working with Tom Hull [Kid Harpoon], our producer for this album, we began thinking, ‘How can we make this a little different?’, which led us to try out different stuff and we eventually ended up doing the intro keyboard thing one day [on ‘Your House’], which re-informed the song and made us view it in a new way,” he said.
“We’ve definitely gotten better at writing songs. We worked with a new producer on this album for the first time,” Keating added. “Working with him made us realise that we had to bring our ‘A’ game and that, in a sense, was the kind of the only pressure we did deal with throughout the whole thing. Just knowing that we had to bring it and be the best versions of ourselves.”
‘Open Wide’ follows on from 2023’s ‘Cuts & Bruises’ and 2021 debut ‘It Won’t Always Be Like This’. It also comes as the band are set to embark on a UK headline tour, before playing a run of dates in Europe, with Blossoms as support. Visit here for remaining tickets.
In a new review of the album, NME gave the record four-stars and described it as one that sees the band “continue to bend rock & roll into new shapes”.
“Throughout ‘Open Wide’, Inhaler display a powerful confidence that’s impossible to resist,” it read. “Comforting, cathartic and heaps of fun, it’s the sort of record that sounds brilliant on headphones but will really come to life, say, as the sun sets on Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage.”
