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Ahead of their debut album, the Manchester band play it in full in an intimate local setting. |
| Photo: Clementine Schneidermann | Words: Bella Platt |
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It’s a heat wave haze inside Low Four Studios in Manchester, the audience gathering close in a room too small for the amount of hope it’s holding. Sweat drips down cheeks, the studio lights are on full beam, and still people dance. Westside Cowboy are playing their upcoming album, ‘It Goes On’, start to finish, live, for the first time. No phones to be seen. |
The urgency of the band may be down to the heat, or it may be down to the record itself, an album that arrives quicker and hungrier than anything they’ve put out before. Two singles have already been released, ‘Kick Stones (The Boys)’ and ‘Pin Up Boys’, both carrying a fervent and restless energy typical of the album as a whole. |
You’ve probably heard the phrase “Britainicana” thrown around before with Westside Cowboy, coined for an earlier EP that ran on country-tinted folk and British lyricism. That influence hasn’t disappeared, but hearing the album live, it’s clearly moved to the back seat this time round. Folk plays a smaller role tonight; what’s left has ascended into something more distinctly theirs, driven harder by the wall of sound coming off the stage. |
Chatting before the band take to the stage, bassist and vocalist Aoife Anson O’Connell lets slip why the record sounds so at home in a venue at the centre of an industrial, northern city. “We didn’t really like being in America while recording, so we took what we liked, which is Loren Humphrey, and shipped him over in a container and made him produce our album in Leeds,” she says, deadpan. That decision to bring the process back to familiar territory seems to explain some of tonight’s ease, a band fully in command of songs mastered on their own turf. |
“Nowadays the album represents us as a band quite aptly,” she adds. “I’m sure in a year we’ll want to change everything, but for right now it sounds alright.” The pre-doors conversation spirals into football analogies, a match playing somewhere out of sight. It’s humble, dry humour- and it’s the same kind that makes the crowd warm to them as much as the songs do. |
The band’s classical training shows tonight without ever being obnoxious. You can hear the tight handling of the three-way vocal split between Aoife and bandmates Jimmy Bradbury and Reuben Haycocks, swinging from something gently melodic to an experimental shout without ever losing shape. Live, that control gives the set its addictive intensity: folk-rooted but developed past just one major influence. Nothing here shies away from ornamental beats or a moment of uncertainty, the set feels thoroughly nurtured and practised. |
Their set progresses with a looseness that has an underlying haste to it, a band rushing to claim the chance they’ve been given rather than let it trickle away. Every face in the room is decorated with a beaming smile. This is a high-energy record, and it plays like one that’s built to launch them somewhere bigger. |
The penultimate song of the album takes a surprising direction. ‘Take My Leaving As I Love You’, an acoustic confession sung by Reuben, is easily a highlight of the record, carving out negative space inside a set otherwise built from waves of sound. It doesn’t break the flow so much as let everyone breathe before the finale arrives. To quote the hots of the ‘Kick Stones’ music video, FC United of Manchester, “the more of us united, the stronger we are.” In that tiny studio, all that mattered was the soft strumming of Reuben’s guitar and a room that had gone completely quiet to listen. |
That sense of community runs through everything the band do, including, beyond the songwriting, their collaboration with FCUM and championing of local initiative “No Band Is An Island,” a music night that platforms political bands and speakers. Community is the foundation the rest of it is built on. It’s there in the room tonight too, filled out with bandmates, promoters, and fellow musicians from the close-knit Manchester scene. |
In their knitted jumpers and baggy jeans, there’s an easy, homespun charm to Westside Cowboy that makes you want to see them go all the way. They are easily the best act to come out of Manchester in the last five years, and tonight they carry the talent to back that up. ‘It Goes On’ is released on 21st August. Be ready. |
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