French Inhaler - PRACTICED LINES (2026)

It is fair to say that recent singles from French Inhaler, namely ‘TV Love’ and ‘Plastic Ocean’, piqued my interest in this Chicago trio, and after all, isn’t that the prime directive of any single, especially those put out to tease the audience and test the waters ahead of an album? And indeed, those two singles are the first two tracks, the first reimagining a band like Joy Division as a more synth-driven affair, the latter using the post-punk vibe as a springboard from which to dive into even poppier, dancable depths.

And so, with familiarity out of the way, I now head into unknown sonic pleasures (pun intended). ‘Haunt You’ sees those fantastic, Cure-esque basslines melodically grooving to skittering beats, the engine room of the song, then draped in scintillating synthy soundscapes and ambient drifts. It’s like taking the hood off of a well-tuned engine and seeing what really drives things along.

‘Comet’ puts a B-52s spin on things, not as deliberately silly (for want of a better word) as they often were, but I could certainly hear the Schneider-Pierson-Wilson axis of vocal ecstasy taking the song on. ‘White Noise’ is the sound of vocal serenity soaring over wilfully and wonderfully choppy sonic waters, and ‘Concorde’ reminds us that everything is cyclical, sounding both nostalgic and forward-thinking.

The worry of any album front-loaded with its stand-alone singles is that the band might be trying too hard to pull you in with songs that have already proven themselves in the field. Practiced Lines demonstrates that they could have released any of these album tracks as singles, and they would have been received with the same acclaim, landing in the discerning music fan’s consciousness with the same squeal of delight. What a great album.