Westside Cowboy’s debut album It Goes On is nothing short of phenomenal. The band have stitched together an exciting, cohesive, and – most impressively – fully formed first record that promises to catapult them into the ranks of Geese, which they have opened for only earlier this year.
What’s immediately striking is how seamlessly Westside Cowboy translate their recorded energy into their live presence. The electricity you feel listening to their tracks is the same electricity that hits you in the chest when they walk onstage. They’re sharp, yes, but they choose to stay raw. There’s a deliberate roughness in their sound, and that’s exactly what makes them so enticing.
A tune by the Manchester band is instantly recognisable. Layered guitars, drums that seem to always push forward and shared vocals that tie the whole thing together. They don’t just complement each other; they create a kind of communal voice. It’s rare to hear a debut where the vocal interplay already feels this intentional. It’s remarkable for a debut, but more than that, it’s unmistakably them.
It feels nearly impossible to pick a favourite from this record. 'Kick Stones (The Boys)' is the clearest showcase of everything Westside Cowboy do so well: the layered guitars that feel like they’re arguing and embracing at the same time, the drums that refuse to sit still, the shared vocals that make the track feel like a conversation rather than a performance.
'Worried Age' leans into the beautifully layered vocals that have become one of their signatures. There’s a tenderness in the way the voices overlap and the trust clearly noticable.
Then 'Take My Leaving As I Love You' arrives and shifts the entire emotional temperature of the album. It goes in a different direction – softer, stranger, more vulnerable – but never feels disconnected. Instead, it expands the record’s emotional vocabulary. Across all of this, the remarkable thing is how it ties together and how these songs, with their different moods and textures, still feel like chapters of one incredible thing.
It Goes On confirms what anyone who’s seen them live already knew: this band is built for longevity.
IT GOES ON OUT NOW.
Words by
Marie Müller, 2026