Westside Cowboy Captures Fleeting Humanity in Timeless Debut Album
Westside Cowboy. Photo by Clementine Schneidermann via Pitch Perfect PR.
Halfway through Westside Cowboy’s performance of “Kick Stones (The Boys)” on Later… with Jools Holland, the band makes its ethos clear, their unadulterated mirth on full display as they jam together with hearts on sleeves. But by the end of the four-minute-long song, the band members transcend the need for such demure metaphors, leaving their hearts pumping on the ground in the impassioned, gritty glory of musicians with something to prove and everything to lose.
If you haven’t heard of Westside Cowboy, this performance of “Kick Stones (The Boys)” is an ideal introduction to the Manchester-based four-piece that has taken over the UK alternative rock scene. The band of 20-something-year-olds — Jimmy Bradbury and Reuben Haycocks on vocals and guitar, Aoife Anson O’Connell on vocals and bass, and Paddy Murphy on drums — exemplifies what it means to create rock music that makes you feel. Their tech-free sound relies on propulsive guitars, tumultuous drum fills, and rough-around-the-edges vocals to tell stories that don’t always make perfect narrative sense, but teem with humanity.
Since the band’s late-2024 debut with single “I’ve Never Met Anyone I Thought I Could Really Love (Until I Met You),” Westside Cowboy has taken home the prize in Glastonbury’s 2025 Emerging Talent Competition, dropped two EPs, opened for Black Country, New Road and Geese, and sold-out their first ever headlining tour. If their impressive list of early accolades isn’t enough to cement their status as rising generational talent, their debut album, It Goes On, certainly pushes them over the edge.
At its core, the 11-track record is a feat of ’90s alt-rock with a morphed sense of simplicity that personifies human connection and everything that comes with it, from catharsis and love, to doubt and sorrow.
Watch Westside Cowboy’s performance of “Kick Stones (The Boys)” on Later… with Jools Holland on YouTube.
Besides being a potential titular follow-up to 2025’s “Don’t Throw Rocks,” “Kick Stones (The Boys)” is an apt opening track for It Goes On, as its final chorus introduces a subtle guitar motif — a quick three-note slide up and back down — that acts as the record’s heartbeat. On the wiry “Well Done Kid, You Did It,” it twinges in the background of the bridge, getting lost in the noise the song’s been building up to with Haycocks and O’Connell’s monotone repetition of, “If you ever find out what happened to me / Hold onto that thought, hold onto that thought / And save me the pain, don’t bring it to me / That person has gone, that person has gone.” Carrying on into the final chorus, that high guitar ad lib acts as a shimmer of comfort and light behind desperation-tinged lyrical affirmations.
Much of It Goes On deals with the big picture challenges Gen Z is facing as it fully experiences adulthood. “Paper Chains” details the beauty the world loses when we prioritize strait-laced facades over passionate imperfection: “You’ve got your full name written with your neatest hand / You’ve got your hair pulled back in a makeshift bow / Behind the brave-faced buildings all across the coast / There is a land colored grey in the constant cold.” The track even has a fake-out ending with Murphy devolving into arrhythmic chaos on the drums and Bradbury opting for an elongated, lower rendition of that three-note guitar motif before a cleaner, yet noticeably more colorful groove returns to carry the track to its end. The message is clear: you can strive for greatness without rigidity.
An epidemic of anxiety is catalogued in “Worried Age” (“We are a worried age / Where your panic feels more real than a thought”) while “Big Wheels” and “Coyote” critique human progress and materialism’s environmental and interpersonal effects. The steady, laborious feel of the former and O’Connell’s natural lilting alto on the latter embody Westside Cowboy’s thoughtful overlap of sonics and storytelling. Bonus points for the full-steam-ahead rhythmic thrust at the end of “Coyote” that parallels the animal running with reckless abandon.
Watch the music video for “Pin Up Boys” on YouTube.
Single and standout track “Pin Up Boys” is a moment of pure catharsis on the record. The band unleashes its full tireless potential, discordant guitar melodies and rugged drum beats accenting Haycocks and O’Connell’s rally cry-like vocals.
On the down-tempo “Patchwork,” the guitar motif shows up like a supportive hand on your shoulder. Situated near the end of the LP, “Patchwork” is a rare instance of insular reflection in the songwriting of It Goes On. “Holes in my clothes / Quick fix it may be / It would take a lot of patchwork to cover my sins,” Haycocks sings in the final verse, the seemingly personal meditation landing gently over plaintive strumming.
“Take My Leaving As I Love You” further proves that Westside Cowboy puts as much intention into their acoustic tracks as the ones that blister. Lyrics like “And if wishing made some sense / This conversation wouldn’t matter” float over a crescendoing and decrescendoing strumming pattern, as if the courage to say what Haycocks needs to comes in hesitant waves.
Through anthemic and poignant examinations of our relationships with ourselves and the people that mean the most of us, Westside Cowboy propounds that there’s no substitution for human connection. As complicated as these ties can be, the band seems to wrap up the notion in a neat little bow to close the album on “You Could Have Died There On the Dancefloor”: “I am everything but perfect / But I am trying, so please keep me around.”