{"id":603186,"date":"2026-08-24T14:28:20","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T14:28:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/603186\/"},"modified":"2026-08-24T14:28:20","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T14:28:20","slug":"breakout-indie-band-westside-cowboy-on-rejecting-tech-and-loving-imperfection-were-not-hermits-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/603186\/","title":{"rendered":"Breakout indie band Westside Cowboy on rejecting tech and loving imperfection: \u2018We\u2019re not hermits!\u2019 | Music"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Westside Cowboy played Later \u2026 With Jools Holland earlier this year, fellow guests Duran Duran offered some advice. \u201cNerves are just your mind telling you that you\u2019re about to do something extraordinary,\u201d Simon Le Bon told the band, who were \u201ccacking their pants\u201d. Le Bon\u2019s words didn\u2019t really help. \u201cI was hoping for some real advice,\u201d says vocalist and guitarist Reuben Haycocks, laughing. \u201cLike, where do I look?\u201d<\/p>\n

The Manchester band have had to learn the ropes quickly. By 2025, only two years after forming, they had won Glastonbury\u2019s emerging talent competition, supported Geese on the year\u2019s buzziest indie tour and signed to a major label. \u201cWe\u2019d be lying if we said there wasn\u2019t a little bit of pressure,\u201d says vocalist and guitarist Jimmy Bradbury.<\/p>\n

Not that you can hear it on their hotly anticipated debut album, It Goes On. Recalling the likes of the Feelies, Parquet Courts and Courtney Barnett, the album touches upon the muscular end of indie-pop, a little midwestern emo and has a chugging drive inspired by the Velvet Underground. \u201cWe weren\u2019t trying to make some career-defining thing,\u201d says drummer Paddy Murphy, as we cram into their tour van backstage at Tramlines festival in Sheffield. \u201cWe love the way debut albums sound when a band feels hungry but still not quite settled. There\u2019s unnecessary pressure on new bands to bottle everything on the first attempt. It doesn\u2019t have to be that way. Just do whatever feels right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Westside Cowboy: Pin Up Boys \u2013 video<\/p>\n

Westside Cowboy are all aged 23 to 26, but \u2013 as their taste in music and resistance to the grind may indicate \u2013 share an old-school mindset. Most of them have brick phones, use MP3 players and collections of analogue gear, from radios to CD players and cassette decks. They\u2019re even considering setting up a PO box address for fans to send letters to. \u201cWe\u2019re not hermits,\u201d insists Bradbury. \u201cWe still have laptops and send emails, but taking away that single-use device, like a phone, really helps free up headspace. These things are designed to be addictive, and it\u2019s trying to find a way to control it, because you don\u2019t have to buy into that.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the same with their music. Bassist and vocalist Aoife Anson-O\u2019Connell finds it \u201creally stifling creatively and personally isolating\u201d being locked perpetually on screens, while Haycocks\u2019 previous band, he says, became frozen by the \u201coption paralysis\u201d of overusing technology. \u201cIt feels like the only way for people of our age, but we reject that. Starting this band, we thought we\u2019d go for the most simple thing possible and that\u2019s also seeped into our daily lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Britanicana is as pointless as all other genres\u2019 \u2026 Westside Cowboy. Photograph: Clementine Schneidermann<\/p>\n

On stage later on, they play an explosive 4pm set to a rammed tent, contrasting sharp, noisy blasts of guitar with layered vocal harmonies. But back in the van, they are a modest and self-deprecating bunch. \u201cWe\u2019re not doing anything revolutionary,\u201d says Anson-O\u2019Connell. Bradbury states: \u201cWe\u2019re not cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

All band members share songwriting duties; when Haycocks writes he tries to channel frontmen he feels possess more panache, such as Lou Reed or the Magnetic Fields\u2019 Stephin Merritt (it might explain the American twang to his vocal delivery). \u201cI\u2019m not someone who feels at my coolest when I\u2019m Reuben Haycocks,\u201d he says. \u201cThere\u2019s a certain level of bravado you need to try to write a song, so to get myself over the line, I\u2019ll be X person for an hour \u2013 as I will never be able to reach that level of awesomeness.\u201d This role play works for figuring out tone, too. One instruction Murphy gave to Bradbury when working out a guitar part was to imagine early rock\u2019n\u2019roller Link Wray \u201ctrying to scare kids\u201d.<\/p>\n

Their love of folk, skiffle, Americana and early rock\u2019n\u2019roll led to them coining their own genre, Britanicana, to capture this hybrid. Now they call it a joke that got out of hand. \u201cA very tongue-in-cheek thing,\u201d says Murphy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf people want to use Britanicana, be my guest,\u201d Haycocks adds. \u201cIt\u2019s as equally pointless as all other genres.\u201d<\/p>\n

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As much as Westside Cowboy feel like a band happily at home in the past, they\u2019re just as invested in improving their own era. Alongside the indie bands Holly Head, Pushbike and Martial Arts, they run a night called No Band Is an Island, which programmes bands and leftwing political speakers to raise money for Medical Aid for Palestine. Although you won\u2019t find explicitly political lyrics in their songs. \u201cWe are all political people,\u201d offers Haycocks, who is wearing a T-shirt calling for animal liberation. \u201cBut we don\u2019t think our music suits going on stage and shouting about politics because that\u2019s not who we are, personally.\u201d<\/p>\n

In hindsight, the fabulously slick Le Bon was probably never going to have much good advice for a band like this. Westside Cowboy\u2019s own musical heroes are artists who have embraced imperfection. Haycocks scrolls through his MP3 player and finds Tom Waits\u2019 Mule Variations. \u201cIt\u2019s like, oh my God, how has he managed to write two of the most goofy songs in the world among five of the greatest?\u201d he says, comparing the likes of Chocolate Jesus with Picture in a Frame.<\/p>\n

Bradbury jumps in: \u201cYou\u2019ve got to have your duds!\u201d Haycocks agrees, inadvertently summing up the band\u2019s MO. \u201cDuds are what make music human.\u201d<\/p>\n

It Goes On is out now on Island<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Westside Cowboy played Later \u2026 With Jools Holland earlier this year, fellow guests Duran Duran offered some…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":603187,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[93,61,60,278],"class_list":["post-603186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=603186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/603187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=603186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=603186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=603186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}