Westside Cowboy gear up for greatness on ‘So Much Country ‘Till We Get There’
Four-piece country rock band Westside Cowboy have their own digital billboard in London’s Leicester Square. Blink, and you might miss it, but it’s there. With their latest EP, So Much Country ‘Till We Get There, the band has proved that it’s only a matter of time until their name will be up in flashing lights: This time, to stay.
The Skinny: When Manchester band Westside Cowboy won Glastonbury Festival’s 2025 Emerging Talent Competition in April 2025, their act was already well-regarded. Top it off with their first EP, This Better Be Something Great, which came at the hot end of a chaotic, cataclysmic summer for the group, and their self-professed ‘Britainicana’ style had a huge flock of new fans lapping up their impressive live shows like a cat to milk.
The band, whose journey began with a torrent of Hank Williams and Lonnie Donegan covers, seems to chart familiar territory as they open their second EP. ‘Strange Taxidermy’ has all the raw emotionality of their humble origins, strengthened by the Adrienne Lenker shake of Aoife Anson O’Connell’s vocals.
Perhaps cursed by its own namesake, the ballad is an odd song to open on, and probably the weakest moment of the EP; the patience their music affords itself might not quite extend all the way to the listener, though there are interesting textures in the swampy crescendo.
On ‘The Wahs’, the band infused some much-needed indie-pop inflexion into the delicious college-rock cadence. “I’m waiting for the sign to tell me I’m alive / To tell me I’m alright,” the track insists, forging a coetrie with the malaised and passive at the heart of the modern condition, with an impressive drumbeat that places the two meanings tangentially.
The profound detachment of MJ Lenderman’s huge 2024 hit ‘Wristwatch’ appears recycled and repurposed in ‘Don’t Throw Rocks’, in which the band sings, “The watch on your arm talks over and over again / But it doesn’t change the fact that you’re wrong’. They pull off this ironising prosaic just as well as Lenderman. Though it’s not a reach to situate the quartet in the former Wednesday guitarists’ remit, listeners might have a better chance at hearing echoes of Cameron Winter, as both acts share the same producer.
Reuben Haycock’s moodier vocals provide extra weight to the release; the magic of the band’s beloved vocal doubling is no better than on ‘In The Morning’, the album’s closer, a triumphant display of the theatrical back-and-forth recently brought into the mainstream by indie band Divorce. Westside Cowboy adds an extra twang and rattle, showing their fearless approach to shaking up a genre cocktail.
The Verdict: It’s fitting that the artwork for the EP shows a slingshot poised in the moment before firing, capturing the breathless tension before the mighty release; Westside Cowboy are situated in that very sweet spot. Everything is set up for a successful launch. All they have to do now is fire.
Release Date: January 16th, 2025 | Producer: Loren Humphrey | Label: Island Records imprint Adventure Recordings
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