Item: It Goes On
Rating: 8
Author: nme

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It Goes On by Westside Cowboy reviewed by nme — 8.0/10 | Wavelength | Wavelength

Manchester’s newest guitar heroes put an arm around your shoulder

What arguably makes the quartet’s bog-standard concoction of bass, drums and guitars so heartfelt and immediate is their chemistry. Somewhere between a slick pub-rock band and four overexcited university students running off instinct – as they recently were – their shows radiate both joy and professionalism. Aoife Anson O’Connell (bass), Jimmy Bradbury (guitar) and Reuben Haycocks (guitar) all trade lead vocals; coupled with Paddy Murphy’s impassioned drumming, they are a band who visibly give 110 per cent for one another.

Recorded in Leeds with producer Loren Humphrey, Westside Cowboy’s debut LP ‘It Goes On’ doesn’t rip up the rulebook of their identity. In many ways, it’s the album you expected them to make; the most comprehensive statement of the alt-country, indie and rockabilly worlds that shaped them. Having extensively road-tested ‘Pin Up Boys’ and ‘Kick Stones (The Boys)’ alongside their first two EPs, those two singles neatly carry the baton forward, and the latter’s intoxicating momentum will put a smile on your face.

While the “big wheels” of time keep on turning, ‘It Goes On’ utilises friendly, straightforward imagery to capture the ambiguity of modern life. Blockbuster DVDs (‘Big Wheels’), paperchains and rocks who “have grown hands to reach out for each other” (‘Coyote’) are nuggets of the world’s simple pleasures that momentarily shut out the uncertainties of young adulthood – and perhaps also this new lifestyle that still “never feels quite certain and real”, as they told NME. As they spell out: “We are a worried age”.

On album closer ‘You Could Have Died There On The Dancefloor’, the band make their peace with the panic: “I am everything but perfect / But I’m trying”. This mission statement for ‘It Goes On’ mirrors a band making sense of their sound, allowing it to breathe in real time, instead of pursuing some flawed perfection. And in a world of optimisation freaks and pressure to have yourself figured out, this down-to-earth debut is everything it needs to be.

Ever since their triumph at Glastonbury’s Emerging Talent Competition in April 2025, you’ll have struggled to find a buzzier British guitar band than Westside Cowboy. Packing out multiple sets at The Great Escape 2025, the Manchester-formed group were soon tied down to Island Records, Wildlife Entertainment (Arctic Monkeys, Fontaines D.C.) for management and thrown into tours with Black Country, New Road, Blondshell and Geese. Suitably, the former NME Cover stars’ self-proclaimed ‘Britainicana’ sound feels neatly perched between those three artists. What arguably makes the quartet’s bog-standard concoction of bass, drums and guitars so heartfelt and immediate is their chemistry. Somewhere between a slick pub-rock band and four overexcited university students running off instinct – as they recently were – their shows radiate both joy and professionalism. Aoife Anson O’Connell (bass), Jimmy Bradbury (guitar) and Reuben Haycocks (guitar) all trade lead vocals; coupled with Paddy Murphy’s impassioned drumming, they are a band who visibly give 110 per cent for one another. Recorded in Leeds with producer Loren Humphrey, Westside Cowboy’s debut LP ‘It Goes On’ doesn’t rip up the rulebook of their identity. In many ways, it’s the album you expected them to make; the most comprehensive statement of the alt-country, indie and rockabilly worlds that shaped them. Having extensively road-tested ‘Pin Up Boys’ and ‘Kick Stones (The Boys)’ alongside their first two EPs, those two singles neatly carry the baton forward, and the latter’s intoxicating momentum will put a smile on your face. While the “big wheels” of time keep on turning, ‘It Goes On’ utilises friendly, straightforward imagery to capture the ambiguity of modern life. Blockbuster DVDs (‘Big Wheels’), paperchains and rocks who “have grown hands to reach out for each other” (‘Coyote’) are nuggets of the world’s simple pleasures that momentarily shut out the uncertainties of young adulthood – and perhaps also this new lifestyle that still “never feels quite certain and real”, as they told NME. As they spell out: “We are a worried age”. On album closer ‘You Could Have Died There On The Dancefloor’, the band make their peace with the panic: “I am everything but perfect / But I’m trying”. This mission statement for ‘It Goes On’ mirrors a band making sense of their sound, allowing it to breathe in real time, instead of pursuing some flawed perfection. And in a world of optimisation freaks and pressure to have yourself figured out, this down-to-earth debut is everything it needs to be.