WESTSIDE COWBOY, IT GOES ON

Britainicana is the term Westside Cowboy came up with to describe their music, and as slightly tongue in cheek as it may be, it fits. The young Manchester band pulls from British folk and indie rock, along with Americana, skiffle, and ’90s alternative rock. On their debut album, It Goes On, those influences come together in a sound that can feel familiar without sounding much like any one of them.

Westside Cowboy formed in Manchester in 2023, with Reuben Haycocks, Paddy Murphy, Aoife Anson O’Connell, and Jimmy Bradbury coming together while at university. Things have moved quickly since then. They won Glastonbury’s Emerging Talent Competition in 2025 and have toured with Black Country, New Road, Blondshell, and Geese. For It Goes On, they worked with producer Loren Humphrey, who also worked with Geese and was drawn to the way Westside Cowboy could push a song seemingly to the verge of falling apart before pulling it back together.

That sense of controlled chaos is one of the things I really like about It Goes On. The songs themselves are fairly straightforward, filled with great melodies and harmonies, but the band plays with everything happening around them. Arrangements expand and contract, quiet passages can suddenly give way to bursts of noise, and there’s always a sense that things could come apart without ever actually doing so. Yet Westside Cowboy make it all sound surprisingly natural. And it's made each listen a bit of an adventure.

It's been a minute since I've heard a band, and an album, that grabbed my attention the way Westside Cowboy and It Goes On have. There's a looseness to the way the band plays, but also a real sophistication to the songwriting. This is an exciting debut album.