Crafting a singular kind of brilliance is required to transform sounds and familiar elements—the ideas we’ve heard a million times—into something visceral, thrilling, and genuinely new. Westside Cowboy, a fresh Manchester outfit, have figured that out. On their debut full-length It Goes On, they return again and again to the well-worn motifs of indie rock—drawling, deadpan vocals, intricate guitar labyrinths, seemingly abstract, non sequitur lyrics, and fervently cried backing harmonies. You can discern snippets and map out exactly which influences they’re borrowing from. Yet Westside Cowboy approach those sounds with such explosive, unbridled joy that the old game of rock-crit cribbing loses its grip. When they truly lift off, which happens repeatedly on this record, you stop viewing them as a reflection of the past and start seeing them as the sound of the future. They pull from many bands, certainly, but more importantly, they become a source of inspiration in their own right.
Westside Cowboy grasp the dynamics of progression. Take the single “Pin Up Boys,” one of the sharpest straight-ahead guitar-rock tracks I’ve heard in the past year. It opens with Reuben Haycocks muttering over clanging, buzzing guitar chimes. His lyrics aren’t explicit enough to reveal a definite meaning—”If nothing else, at least I looked alive/ I was standing to attention by the time that you arrived”—yet they carry personal weight for him, and a plaintive, aching tinge colors his delivery. Then the hammer drops, and the rest of the band crashes in. They’re fuzzy, ruthless, and angular, driving Haycocks’ voice into a clenched-teeth snarl. When the chorus hits, the drums rumble like boulders cascading down a mountainside, and the whole band backs Haycocks, turning him from a solitary oddball into the leader of a chaotic mob. Then they expand, until everyone’s howling together and every wild drum fill and guitar-scratch erupts like a firework exploding in your brain. I don’t know what the song is about, but I know what it does to me.
How does that happen? How is there this much fevered life in what these kids are doing? Westside Cowboy aren’t necessarily aiming to push indie rock forward, but there’s an adrenaline-fueled, relentless intensity threaded through every track on It Goes On. The album’s sound sits firmly in the 1990s indie rock that predated the band members’ births. Earlier this year, Haycocks told The Big Takeover that he learned about Pavement, Wilco, and Teenage Fan Club from his parents. Yet even when the record directly quotes the touchstones of earlier generations, It Goes On never feels like pastiche. It’s far more alive than that.
Westside Cowboy have only been a band for roughly three years. They connected while studying at a Manchester conservatory, with some of them only recently graduating. A few had played together in different configurations before forming this group. In the beginning, Westside Cowboy served as an excuse to hang out and perform folk and skiffle covers, and that simplicity and engagement carried over when they started composing original material. As a unit, they commit to an organic approach, resisting any studio embellishments they wouldn’t be able to reproduce live. Haycocks appears to be the de facto frontman, but all four members occasionally take the lead. Perhaps that shared leadership is why they’ve managed to channel such a dizzy, reckless energy, or perhaps it’s something more enigmatic—something that can only be experienced, not explained.
It’s time to mention the name now: Geese. I wasn’t going to leave this review without bringing them into the conversation. Westside Cowboy have opened for Geese on prior bills. They tracked It Goes On with Loren Humphry, a producer who has collaborated with Geese and with Cameron Winter as a solo artist. Reuben Haycocks doesn’t share Winter’s operatic howl, but his frazzled, deadpan delivery carries a similar edge, and the two bands share a taste for frenzied, angular guitar squalls. Both Geese and Westside Cowboy sometimes feel like they’re racing to carve out their screeching, fizzing sounds before inspiration runs dry. Yet despite those similarities, the two groups are not interchangeable. Where Geese exude a skewed glamor, Westside Cowboy offer a luminous melodic simplicity, something they say they borrowed from traditional folk music. It’s refreshingly wholesome.
It Goes On follows a pair of highly promising EPs and fulfills the potential those records hinted at. The album is studded with moments that sweep me away—the drum storm and overlapping voices on “Well Done Kid, You Did It,” the carefree surf-guitar lines on “Coyote,” and the moment when “Paper Chains” disintegrates, ends, and then suddenly restarts. Westside Cowboy aren’t shy about quoting the greats. Their “Big Wheels” lyrics nod to Bob Dylan and Creedence Clearwater Revival, while Aoife Anson-O’Connell’s halting vocal on “Coyote” evokes the Velvet Underground moments where Maureen Tucker led. But these gestures never feel merely reverent or cute. Instead, they illuminate this band’s rare ability to construct exciting new structures from familiar material.
We don’t often encounter debut albums like this. I sense a contrast in Westside Cowboy between their anxiety and their confidence, and a confidence that carries an anxious undertow. Nearly every track ascends into a roaring tower of jubilant noise, while nearly every track also holds a delicate, breath-stopping moment of beauty. In spite of their inventive instrumental interplay, the sharp hooks, and the overall buzz-band vibe they radiate, Westside Cowboy come across as a group of kids still thrilled to discover what kinds of sounds they can make together. They may have built their sound from familiar building blocks, but to them it’s all brand new. And when that uplifting electricity lifts you up and carries you away, it can feel newly discovered to you as well.
It Goes On lands on August 21 via Island.
Other notable releases this week include:
• Wild Pink’s Still Coming Down
• Denzel Curry & Kenneth Blume’s ii
• Weezer’s Weezer (The Gold Album)
• Brennan Wedl’s Brennan Wedl
• Chelsea Wolfe’s The Dark
• Sondre Lerche’s Acrobats
• The Afghan Whigs’ Soft Control
• Julia Holter’s Materia
• Jorja Smith’s What Are The Odds
• Brandon Flowers’ Thrasher
• Lambchop’s Punching The Clown
• Squirrel Flower’s Say A Prayer To The Gods Of Getting Going
• Cornelius’ Refractions
• Lusine’s Melting Days
• Tyondai Braxton’s Splayed Werks
• Stephen O’Malley’s Avaeken
• Cleo Sol’s Gentlewoman
• DMA’s’ DMA’s
• Black Marble’s Life In Small Spaces
• Sam Smith’s Hazel Eyes
• Skilla Baby’s The Price Of Fame
• Natalie Merchant’s Cabinet Of Wonder
• William Shatner’s Love & Other Mysteries
• Sir Anthony Hopkins’ Life Is A Dream
• Grace Potter’s Trespasser
• Keb’ Mo’’s The Breakdown
• Guiding Light’s Fear On My Own Time
• Elanor Moss’ The Knife, The Needle
• Loren Connors, Elliott Sharp, & Michael Vallera’s When The Moon Is New
• GB’s Herzsprung
• Rob Moose & Thomas Powers’ Put Wind In My Sails
• Mary Beth Barone’s Galaxy Brain
• Francesca Gaza’s Crown Shyness
• Frances Chang’s been thinking bout confession
• Oh Louise’s Everything On High
• Stoic’s PAELLA!
• Ray Wylie Hubbard’s Reel 2 Reel 4 Real
• Steve Hackman’s Sacred Math
• Improvement Movement’s Your Perfect Real Life
• Lexi Jayde’s LOVER GIRL
• Destin Conrad’s Roadrunner
• James Eichman’s St. Catherine Street
• Shimonaka’s Shimonaka
• Lorg’s I Fell For Fantasy
• Jack Larkin’s Purkinje Shift
• My Pet Fossil’s Live My Valley Life
• Anna Graves’ America’s Greatest Burnout
• Ruth B.’s Peace To Make
• I Will Die In This Jean Jacket’s Hang From A Cloud
• Joyous Wolf’s In Between
• Sweet Gloom’s No Love Lost
• Antony Szmierek’s Decoding Birdsong
• RIBS’ COLD RIBS
• The Barbarians Of California’s MEGATONS
• Paul Spring’s Barnstorm
• Ok Cowgirl’s Rhinestone Cowgirl
• Mark Ciani’s Utopia
• Ocean Sleeper’s Peace When I’m Dead
• Sawyer Hill’s Everybody’s Home, Nobody’s Happy
• New Age Healers’ Blowing Smoke Through the Choir
• French Film’s Yours + Five
• James Ivy’s The Seams
• Bombargo’s Love, In Spite Of Everything
• Only Fire’s Hoe Weekend
• Ghost Hounds’ Justified
• Siavash Amini & Eugene Thacker’s Songs For Sad Poets, Vol. III
• Dana Salah’s Bent Bladna
• Echoes Of…’s Last Days
• Mark Chadwick’s Ouse Dragon
• Ernest Strawfield’s Untitled
• Fatt Smaxk’s Banks House
• AXTY’s The Pain Made Me Who I Am
• Plum’s Bodies In Motion
• Steven Price’s Coyote vs. Acme soundtrack
• Stella Lefty’s Long Way Home
• Cruz Beckham’s Wear & Tear
• Paris Jackson’s HAPPIEST DAY OF MY LIFE
• The Cramps’ Gravest Gravy
• Happy Mondays’ Pills ‘n’ Thrills And Bellyaches (Super Deluxe Edition)
• The Verve Records: The Sound Of America box set
• Maribou State’s Hallucinating Love (Deluxe)
• Double Wish’s Double Wish Remixes
• ENHYPEN’s THE SIN : BLISS mini album
• No Joy & Fire-Toolz’s Big Life, Big Leaf EP
• Um, Jennifer?’s Dirty Twice EP
• Wolf Alice’s The Clearing (B Sides) EP
• Lutto Lento’s 2569 EP
• Kojo Funds’ Hello It’s Me Again EP
• The Secret Plan’s Word Weapons EP
• Foglights’ Nous Deux EP
• Brandon Wisham’s Ain’t What It Looks Like EP
• Spaer’s Lessons And Nonsense EP
• Nolan Taylor’s 1:17AM EP
• Lilyisthatyou’s FROM THE GARDEN I GREW EP
