This band could be one of the greats.

Westside Cowboy are positioning themselves as bringers of the prophesied cultural shift away from irony and nonchalance, as bards singing for those who are reaching for something they can’t be sure is there. They’re not earnest in a way which could warrant parody by Kyle Gordon, but they certainly run, and in my view successfully evade, the risk.

Formed in Manchester by Reuben Haycocks, James Bradbury, Aoife Anson O’Connell and Paddy Murphy this is a group fresh off of winning Glastonbury’s Emerging Talent Competition. Self-professedly ripping from Big Thief, Pixies, and Alex G, ‘This Better Be Something Great’ is a project which should be measured on the same rubric as records like ‘Two Hands’ or ‘Rocket’.

Each of the five tracks have their narrator directly address the famous, nebulous ‘you’ that songs like these are sung about, but it never sounds kitsch or reductive. Interviewed by Clash, Haycocks says ‘most songs are either a love song, a hate song or a Johnny Cash reference’, and it appears we get 2, 2, and 1 respectively on the EP.

I’ve Never Met Anyone I Thought I Could Really Love (Until I Met You) is a barnstorming first single and kicks the door down with sounds and words about being lovelorn while in love. For nearly 6 months this was the only track the band had available to stream and operated as a surprisingly clear manifesto for a track with a 14-word title. Those 6 months were a break long enough to make one fall in love with Westside Cowboy’s potential and then start to get anxious about whether they’d live up to the hype, but maybe that was the point all along – after all, that may be what the songs are about.  

This can be heard acutely on Shells, which begins as a tune that, if listened to just right, recalls dolewave staples like Dick Diver, delivering a slow and ambling lament over a particularly bad fight with a lover. And then suddenly it’s not that. It jumps up to life with the clarity that comes with finally deciding to get over yourself, but unlike many of us, it has the momentum to persist. Shells is a mid-project highlight about getting yourself up off the floor as there’s nought else to do, and a song that also includes an oblique and potentially self-destructive take on the all-timer ‘I have a gun’ bit, which is nice.

On Alright, Alright, Alright, the band giddily play hot potato with the spirit of the Modern Lovers. Noting the band’s professed love for and stated influence of the Bugsy Malone soundtrack, following Jonathan Richman’s lead and making a mid-career switch to writing kid’s albums about abominable snowmen in markets, dinosaurs, little aeroplanes, or buzzing bees isn’t out of the question.

On the whole, the most obvious point of comparison might be their comrades Divorce, a similarly buzzy band, and the purveyors of the t-shirt that garners me the most weird looks per capita. This is clearest on ‘Drunk Surfer’, which could have easily been included on Divorce’s 2022 debut EP Get Mean. The bands share, along with groups like The Tubs and The Cindys, a deep appreciation for Americana (Westside Cowboy have self-billed their sound as ‘Britannicana’) and the twee hits of the late 90s and early 00s – some days you might wake up convinced Westside Cowboy are Camera Obscura for boys.

Gender essentialist nonsense aside, these are fantastic, punchy guitar songs about matters of the heart.

Nothing new, sonically or emotionally, is excavated on ‘This Better Be Something Great’, but that’s what makes Westside Cowboy’s Britannicana stick. Anson O’Connell, speaking to Jack Young and Lewis Evans on the Blue Harbour, has said that punctuality and politeness is the most punk-rock thing a person can do, which is a sentiment I feel can be translated across each track. If there’s anything to learn from this project, it’s that being aloof and a bit of a mess is over, Westside Cowboy are telling you to let people know that you care, and listening to them could really be something.

73

Ollie O’Brien

18 September 2025