Photo Credit: Bethan Lees
Words: Kathleen O’Sullivan

It would be difficult to discuss the new rock explosion seeping out of Manchester without mentioning Westside Cowboy. And their debut album, It Goes On, set to be released on the 21st August, has only confirmed their established place in this conversation. 

An apt introduction, Kick Stones (The Boys) has the group 1-0 up only four minutes in. Percussion is restless, guitars are audacious, and the quartet’s deliberately unpolished alt-country style shines. Overspilling with passion and Mancunian pride, it’s no wonder the track was critically exceptionally well received. With vocals shared between each member and instrumentation often layered alongside them, there is a constant depth to the tracks. This made the momentary isolation of Hayocks’ voice in Paperchains a thoughtful juxtaposition to the ensuing guitar heavy sections. 

In keeping with its instrumental namesake, Dobro meets (and surpasses) its good expectations, with its upbeat, crowd-pleasing guitar riffs. But look a little deeper, and you’ll see a Dobro guitar sat next to a person on the stairs. One observing the other. Perhaps there is a deliberate stagnating nostalgia, as we wait for ‘you’ to come home ‘if you can’. Or perhaps, as the band jokingly commented, ‘it could just be a song about a weird guitar.’ And that’s Westside Cowboy; they aren’t trying to craft an image. They say it as it is, something very obvious in their heady, unapologetic music. This idea of identity rears its head in the foot-tapping tune that is Well Done Kid You Did It. Following this, is Worried Age, a likely response to the unexpected trip into young adulthood. It clamours and shakes, a bold reaction to the violence of change and the worry that accompanies it. 

Big Wheels rolls along, a more mellow, but no less enjoyable, journey than previous songs. ‘Love isn’t found in a shell, but it’s found by a door’; the enduring vision of an emerging Venus, offering accessible love is contrasted by something more fleeting. Nostalgia perpetuates, lingering by a door you can’t quite close. The quartet prove their versatility, softening the instrumentation whilst maintaining the scrappier elements of their distinctive sound, returning towards the track’s close.

Pin Up Boys launches in, turning up the energy once again, and is an intoxicating example of the band’s ability to absolutely rock. Coyote is sharp, the lyricism of the group piercing as Anson O’Connell coos: ‘this is the most beautiful place on planet earth…we’ll put a road straight down through it’. ‘Mr Coyote’ is told to move, and he makes way for a fast-paced exploration of the environmental jeopardy at the forefront of Generation Z’s mind. 

Patchwork was a personal highlight. Placed in a game no one wants to play, there is the question of ‘where my move went wrong’. The instrumentation fits the ‘house on the shore’, almost tide like as the expected rock ambushes you before pulling away to reveal the piano rippling beneath. There is real heart and real feeling; it’s a moment that truly reinforces the band’s unpretentious brilliance. 

Slightly Leonard Cohen Esque, the galloping Take My Leaving as I Love You, is a stripped back and endearing wade into balladry. The final goodbye, You Could Have Died there on the Dancefloor, bursts with everything that is Westside Cowboy. The resistance to plastic prison screens, the imploring ‘I’m trying…please keep me around’. It twangs, clashes and drives you to have no excuse for not attempting to earn such a comment as You Could Have Died there on the Dancefloor. 

It Goes On, with its seemingly infinite patchwork of genre and tangible chemistry only possible for such a passionate group will, I’m certain, see the band staying around for a very long time.