Manchester quartet Westside Cowboy release It Goes Onhis debut album, on August 21 on Island Records. Since releasing their debut EP last year, the band have won the Glastonbury talent competition, opened for Geese across Europe and performed in Later… with Jools Holland. His rule, or almost: two guitars, a bass, a drums, no synth, no clicks, no AI.
It’s their only day off at home in months, and the members of Westside Cowboy are doing their least favorite activity: staring at a screen. Only one member of the Manchester group has a smartphone. Singer-guitarist Reuben Haycocks used to have a flip phone, but he lost it a while ago, and he’s in no rush to find it again.
The fast-rising quartet will no doubt find out soon. Since the release of his first EP last year, he has performed at Glastonbury – winning the festival’s young talent competition in the process –, opened for Geese across Europe and made an appearance in Later… with Jools Hollanda television institution for British music. His first album, It Goes Onreleased on August 21 by Island Records. It’s full of stripped-down, propulsive rock tracks that might vaguely remind you of a band or two you once loved. They don’t care: reminding you of the music you love, or just the idea of loving music, that’s the whole point. Especially when it’s a human doing it.
Today, however, the members of Westside Cowboy are tackling the arduous task of air-drying laundry in the apartment that some share, Bradbury having taken a few laps at the pool before our Zoom to eliminate, he says, all the veggie burgers that the group eats on the road (note to backstage catering: expand your vegetarian offerings). They look pretty much the same as when they came on stage: basic t-shirts and jeans. They like to keep it simple, and stay offline as much as possible.
An attitude that might surprise some grumpy elders, quick to portray this generation as disconnected, disengaged and totally obsessed with constant scrolling, incapable of formulating a sentence without asking ChatGPT to do it for them. The truth is that the members of Westside Cowboy — all in their early 20s — worry about it as much as anyone. Since their shared college debut just three years ago, they’ve strived to be an antidote to the digital age as a rock quartet. They want messy, urgent concerts, their imperfections exposed, their music uncomplicated. A guitar that sounds like a guitar, a drum that sounds like a human is actually hitting it. No synths, no fills, no clicks. And absolutely no AI.
That human interaction — and a healthy dose of youthful fun — is key to the Westside Cowboy story. O’Connell, Murphy and Haycocks were friends at the Royal Northern College of Music, while Bradbury and Murphy played together on stage in a “surf-punk trio”. They all grew up around Manchester, listening to the Strokes and Arctic Monkeys despite the omnipresent electronic sounds around them, before developing a passion for the DIY scenes in their local community.
Well, everyone except O’Connell.
Westside Cowboy in Manchester, July 2026. © Samantha Corcoran for WECB
They played locally, until catching the attention of Loren Humphrey, known for his work with artists like Geese. He produced Westside Cowboy’s second EP, then signed on for the debut album.
In the studio, they stuck firmly to their founding credo: “It doesn’t have to be original. It doesn’t have to be anything at all.”says Haycocks. “We’ll write songs like we’re other people, and we’ll write the simplest, most fun stuff possible. »
© Samantha Corcoran for WECB
Their single “Kick Stones (The Boys)” clearly illustrates the effectiveness of the formula. The Velvet Underground’s “What Goes On” served as a reference, but the looseness keeps it fresh, Haycocks sometimes singing as if he were running against an hourglass, sometimes stretching out each syllable in a drawling phrasing, joining O’Connell on the harmonies. A bit of Bradbury’s inner Julian Casablancas comes out on tracks like “Dobro” and “Big Wheels”, the alternation of singers giving the whole thing the feel of a family affair, tentacles rather than a single-celled organism. Almost every song explodes into a satisfying crescendo (although they know how to write an equally formidable ballad that never explodes, like “Take My Leaving As I Love You”, where you can hear the hum of the room in the recording).
The group also places great emphasis on community. That of the public, observed on tour with Geese, and that which he can create within it and beyond. Haycocks has been delving into the Blue Zones—the idea of where people live the longest—lately and discovered that one of the best predictors of longevity is being around lots of people, all the time. “This magic of doing things with others can literally make you live longer, statistically”he said, before joking: Mick Jagger’s secret might be that“he has lots of friends”.
Early on, the band co-founded an organization called No Band Is An Island, which aims to push the music community to become more of a collective for the common good: drawing attention to global causes and raising awareness on the road, striving to only play in handicapped-accessible venues, keeping ticket prices low, and ensuring gender-neutral restrooms at concerts. Concerts for which they hope people will put down their phones, simply there for a bit of rock’n’roll.
