Manchester quartet Westside Cowboy have quickly carved out a distinct reputation as one of the UK’s most passion-filled authentic sounding and exciting live acts to date. Despite having released only a handful of EPs and singles over the past two years, their blistering, raucous live performances have seen them share stages with Cameron Winter’s acclaimed New York outfit Geese, slingshotting them towards 1000+ cap venues before any mention of a debut album.
After a sold-out headline tour across the UK in January 2025, and following a tour with Black Country, New Road last October, Westside Cowboy have been working on their debut album with Leon Humphrey (Geese, Cameron Winter, Wunderhorse) at Greenmount Studios in Leeds, where Humphrey has managed to capture the zeal of their live performances in the recordings.
Bassist and vocalist Aoife Anson O’Connell explains “We loved the way it felt to play, but we thought we couldn’t record it like that or people would think we wanted to be a stadium rock band,” Instead, they used a live recording of The Velvet Underground’s ‘What Goes On’ as their primary reference point for the recordings, and translated it through their own lens.
“We always thought, if we can pull this off it could be really fun,” drummer Paddy details. “Taking this mad, ‘70s rock thing but then having it played by a bunch of scrawny kids.” It is this thoughtful approach staying true to themselves and who they are as individuals that shines throughout their debut album. Emotions are at the heart of the matter: these are songs that aim to distill the confusion, desperation, and that magic blind hope of youth into eleven stirring tracks.
And further, this is evident in the way Westside Cowboy have always tried to focus on what unites people. Early on in the group’s life, they co-created No Band Is An Island: a Manchester-based collective putting on fundraising nights to spotlight both local artists and important issues via speakers from charities and direct action groups.
Even so, in their video for ‘Kick Stones (The Boys)’, they collaborated with local football club FC United of Manchester: a splinter team that started when Manchester United were sold to an American corporation. “They’re very community minded and they have a similar atmosphere to what we want to be,” says guitarist/vocalist Reuben Haycocks. “Their ethos is ‘making friends not millionaires’.”
In this current musical climate, Westside Cowboy’s ethos and genuine sense of camaraderie shines like a breath of fresh air. In a time when authenticity can feel unachievable, the band have found their stance by placing a strong emphasis on connection, collaboration and the shared experience of music – not forgetting their roots and how their enviroment inspires their approach to song writing. A defiant sense of community is deeply embedded in the way Westside Cowboy operate. This can be seen during the end of their live performances, where the band congregate around a single microphone, and end the set with ‘In The Morning’ in a fresh, unifying sense of connection, reminiscent to the 1960’s revolutionary folk artists performances, where the microphone would be shared as one, to emphasise that we are all one, and that in these times connection is needed more than ever.
This is exemplified further on the artwork for their debut album ‘It Goes On’, the band haven’t opted for high-end art, or something that misrepresents who they are as individuals for aesthetic pleasure, they’ve chosen a photograph of two high-rise blocks of flats in Leeds, with a slightly skinny looking horse in the foreground, representing the ordinary environments that could’ve been taken anywhere in the North of England. The quartet play into the very environments that made them, the psychogeography of the places that would go on to inspire their sound, and their signature motorik heart-wrenching harmonies they masterfully craft an essence of transcendence.
“Words on a page are incomplete. The poem, the novel or the non-fiction pamphlet are finished when they are taken up and engaged with. Connection is collaborative. For words to have meaning, they have to be read.” ― Kae Tempest, On Connection.
On the 27th August, nearly a week after the release of their debut album ‘It Goes On’, Westside Cowboy continue to demonstrate their communal and intimate ethos by playing a series of in-store shows across the UK. This evening we are in attendance at Rough Trade in Liverpool, on a miserable looking Thursday evening, among a couple of hundred eagerly awaiting fans clutching the debut album and preparing for the UK’s most exciting live act to take stage.
Vocalist and guitarist Reuben Haycock appeared from behind the red velvet curtain onto the stag, as the house lights came on and the background music came to a halt, seeming to startle the audience, he explained that they the past few shows they have been performing the album in its entirety, but asked how the crowd would feel if they preformed a standard headline set to which, struck by the confusion the audience quickly found their voices and cheered pleased to hear that much of their back catalogued would be heard.
Photo by Arlo McCarthy
At 8pm, Westside Cowboy arrived on stage, smiling out towards the audience before opening the set with the first single from their latest album ‘Kick Stones (The Boys). As Reuben Haycock’s singular riff spilled into the room, captivating an anticipated silence, before drummer Paddy Murphy and bassist and vocalist Aoife Anson O’Connell joined in a collective unision to join the momentum the track. It’s in these parts of the songs where you can hear The Velvet Underground’s influence on the band. By the nature of the structure, it also touches into post-rock territories, through the gradual heightening of the momentum from the singular repetition, pulling emotions from the continuity. The track builds, not from an hysteric fret-shifting guitar solo – it revolves and develops from the singular note to blossom into a heartfelt motorik ensemble that continuously elevates as instruments hit harder, subtle chord changes and the visceral energy leaks from each member, demonstrating a greater understand not only of what this music means to them, but how it naturally expresses their lived experiences.
Although it appears that Westside Cowboy have perfected this signature sound, it’s tracks like ‘Big Wheels’, ‘Patchwork’ and ‘Coyote’ that demonstrate the diversity in their songwriting abilities. Not only have they mastered their energetic pop-filled sound, the approach taken to the more delicate realms still radiates a unique identity in their sound, unlike most of their contemporaries, Westside Cowboy have a distinct whole rounded sound that sharpens themselves as musicians but deeply crafts the sonic world in which they depict.
Photo by Arlo McCarthy
As the quarter fly through old and new tracks like ‘Paper Chains’, ‘I’ve Never Met Anyone I Thought I Could Really Love (Until I Met You)’, Strange Taxidermy’ and ‘Worried Age’, a distinct highlight of the set was hearing the summer drenched jangle-adjacent chorus of ‘The Wahs’, a timeless melody that proves irresistible not to singalong. From the front to the back of the narrow Rough Trade Liverpool, the crowd sang together in full voice, as old and new fans intermingled in their shared love of the Norths finest new Alternative rock band. It’s not often you go to a gig and leave feeling like it will be the last time ever you’ll see them in a venue that size, and you could feel this buzz around the venue tonight it was a memory waiting to be played. I saw Westside Cowboy in a 200 cap venue in Liverpool on Thursday night, another fabled tale like the Sex Pistols’ Manchester Lesser Trade Hall gig.
Westside Cowboy seriously do have something special, and it’s hard to put your finger on just what it is – the authenticity, ego-less and pure self-expression lends perfectly into their communal ethos as a band and carves them out a space on their own, unlike any other band out there at the minute.
FULL UK LIVE SCHEDULE
22.05 – Bearded Theory, Walton-on-Trent
24.05 – Neighbourhood, Warrington
21.06 – TRNSMT, Glasgow
09.07 – Ally Pally Park, London (with The Maccabees)
24.07 – Tramlines, Sheffield
25.07 – Latitude, Beccles
26.07 – Truck, Oxfordshire
21.08 – Green Man, Crickhowell
28.08 – Leeds Festival, Leeds
30.08 – Reading Festival, Reading
24.11 – St Luke’s, Glasgow
25.11 – NUSU, Newcastle
26.11 – Crookes Social Club, Sheffield
27.11 – Irish Centre, Leeds
29.11 – XOYO, Birmingham
30.11 – 1865, Southampton
01.12 – Chalk, Brighton
02.12 – O2 Forum Kentish Town, London
04.12 – Electric Bristol, Bristol
05.12 – Albert Hall, Manchester
