Westside Cowboy at Rough Trade East

By Alexia Heasley

On Thursday 20th August, with just hours to go before the release of their debut album It Goes On, Westside Cowboy took over Rough Trade East, London, for the first live outing of the record. Having supported Geese on the European leg of their tour earlier this year, the fresh-faced Manchester band had already attracted a dedicated following, eager enough to wrap a winding queue around the Shoreditch block in anticipation.

In the first thirty minutes after doors opened, the converted record store filled with a stream of excited fans occupying the spaces normally divided by stalls and stands. Large posters and framed maps covered the windows, shutting out the August evening sun and transforming the space into something closer to a basement venue, allowing the red lights to centre everyone’s attention on the stage. A mix of young adults in their early 20s brushed shoulders with an older crowd of fans whose silver hair turned a punkish red under the LEDs. All waited to hear what Westside Cowboy has coined as “Britainicana” music, a genre that combines British indie with Americana roots music in a far more natural way than the clunky genre name suggests.

When the band appeared on stage an hour after doors, the audience greeted them like old friends, ready for the music to begin. The applause after each song was thunderous, accompanied by cheering and hollering; the applause for the tuning breaks considerably less so. The band members engaged with the crowd in a few awkward but charming exchanges throughout, commenting on the use of phrases like ‘heebie-jeebies’ and ‘jeez-o!’, perhaps more comfortable with expressing themselves through music than small talk. The audience reactions to these snippets were polite and muted, perhaps using the time between songs instead to catch their breath, afraid that once the song begins they would breathe too loudly and obscure the sound of a particularly beautiful chord sequence or favourite lyric.

That intense, shared reverence only made the band’s chemistry more apparent. Reuben Haycocks and Aoife Anson O’Connell, sharing lead vocal duties alongside rhythm guitar and bass guitar respectively, seemed consumed by a conversation of their own. Smiles appeared before harmonies were revealed, whilst knowing nods, glances, and laughs would communicate more between them than entire verses. Whatever memories and experiences were woven into these songs clearly belonged to all four musicians, but Haycocks and O’Connell often looked as though they were reliving them in real time.

The band’s individual confidence and quirks gradually emerged as the set unfolded. Haycocks and lead guitarist Jimmy Bradbury both started the evening wearing glasses, only to abandon them midway through, as though the growing momentum of the performance rendered practicality unnecessary. At the back of the stage sat drummer Paddy Murphy, partially obscured by the three vocalists before him but quietly serving as the group’s anchor. As each song transitioned into the next, the three vocalists turned around, backs to the audience, and looked to Murphy for guidance. While Haycocks and O’Connell were happy to provide the emotional centre of Westside Cowboy, Murphy was clearly the gravitational one.

On their eighth track, ‘Coyote’, the evening reached one of its emotional peaks. Aoife Anson O’Connell sings the opening line, “This is the most beautiful place on planet earth.” Looking around at the smiles on every musician and audience member in that room, it was difficult to find anyone who could disagree. Another highlight arrived with the penultimate track, ‘Take My Leaving As I Love You’. An acoustic track performed by Haycocks alone, the song drew the evening’s high energy into a soft, swinging lull. As he hummed through the outro, his face briefly tightened into a grimace that suggested genuine vulnerability, as though he was deciding only in that moment to share it with each individual watching.

As the audience filed out of the venue, the queue for the merch stand – exclusively made up of red T-shirts branding a white lineart depiction of the album cover on the front and the band’s name on the back – grew longer and longer. The verdict on It Goes On had already been reached, allowing the disappearing T-shirts to provide the proof.

Six hours later, at midnight on the 21st, the album arrived on streaming services for everyone else. Fans of Britainicana music were gifted a remarkable new record, whilst those of us packed into Rough Trade East gained something harder to reproduce: the experience of hearing those songs shared with the world for the very first time.