Westside Cowboy ‘It Goes On’ review: A brilliantly thrilling debut

When Westside Cowboy formed in Manchester in 2023, their heady cocktail of scuzzy 90s guitars and a subtle love of skiffle gave birth to a sound they called Britainicana. In an interview last year with Rolling Stone UK, they described it as offering a lyrical celebration of the mundane paired against 90s alt-rock (think Pavement and you’re halfway there).

Now, nearly two years after their debut single was released, all of these things come to the natural fore on It Goes On, which marks one of the most thrilling records to have been released by a British band in 2026. But what’s also true is that when the dust settles on that aforementioned catchy portmanteau coined by the group, this record will simply be remembered for the fact that it offers up an incredible array of simply brilliant guitar music.

‘Kick Stones (The Boys)’ begins with looping and whirring guitars, before slowly developing into an all-enveloping wall of noise. ‘Worried Age’ is a thunderous racket, while things take a slower turn on ‘Big Wheels’ – a gorgeous existential ponderer packed with blissful rhythms. It’s the same on the country flecked ‘Take My Leaving As I Love You’, which sees them leaning into balladry with genuinely stunning results.

‘Pin Up Boys’, meanwhile, is the sound of a band completely letting loose and refusing to be constrained, as knotty guitars combine with the vocals of Reuben Haycocks and Aoife Anson O’Connell. It’s no wonder the band have played it more than any other song.

“I was outside looking in,” says Haycocks on the cyclical rhythms of closing track ‘You Could Have Died There on the Dancefloor’. It’s a semi-ironic statement, given that this album should shed any notion of this bunch being outsiders. Instead, it cements their place as one of the most thrilling and consistently exciting guitar bands to have emerged out of these isles for a considerably long time.