Westside Cowboy live at the Crescent review – new kids on the block are the real deal

Their claims of genre invention may be a little dubious, but no bother – this fresh-faced Manchester band already has a wealth of perfectly imperfect indie rock zingers, delivered in a succinct York set that promised much bigger stages to come.

‘Britainicana’ is the rather ungainly term you’ll hear Manchester indie band Westside Cowboy dragging around with them in interviews, referring to their supposedly radical transposition of Americana songs from the casinos of Las Vegas or hip clubs of New York to the somewhat less glamorous reality of windswept north-west England. They aim to give influences like The La’s, Pavement and (… checks notes) Chappell Roan a new northern earthiness, but exactly how they’re achieving that is anyone’s guess. After all, the reigning Best Band in America (if their eulogising press is to be believed) Geese are beloved precisely as a result of their ramshackle earthiness, and it’s difficult to see how Westside Cowboy hope to add a distinctly Mancunion edge. You can forgive a new band in 2025 for having to resort to such gimmicky narrative hooks to tempt precious coverage from article writers and radio DJs, but the truth is Britainicana is an oddly academic term for a band whose music feels so immediate and full of feeling. Westside Cowboy’s songs are not the sort to make you scratch your chin and and delve into any oblique musical references to its inspirations. Instead, this is music simply to scream, cry and dance to.

In fairness, this slick 45 minute set in York is bookended by overt references to Americana, initially in Reuben Haycocks’ spectral slide guitar in a self-assured instrumental opening number, and then in the heartwarming closing campfire folk number in which the entire band huddle around a single microphone to belt out gorgeously heartfelt harmonies. All that was missing was some marshmallows to toast on the flames. But for the most part, Westside Cowboy’s Americana offering is only present in a willingness to be enjoyably rough around the edges: a drum thrill so viscerally thrilling that Paddy Murphy can be forgiven for speeding up a little, or a vocal hook so anthemic that you can hear Aoife Anson-O’Connell’s unadorned voice fraying at the edges. Little moments of peril like these – helped by the humble surroundings of the Crescent, yet another wonderful independent venue currently under a very real threat of closure – are what makes live indie rock gigs so thrilling. Westside Cowboy have clearly rehearsed tonight’s set many, many times, enough to make the transitions irresistibly slick and to maintain a zippy momentum throughout, but not so much that we lose any of the source material’s emotional potency, nor its sense that it might be about to all fall apart at any moment.

The four-piece band are all fresh out of university and Westside Cowboy have only released seven songs at the time of writing, so about half of tonight’s gig features unreleased, unnamed music, all of which sounds hugely promising. Anson-O’Connell and Haycocks’s beguiling vocal chemistry proves to be the main draw, the former’s youthful exuberance the perfect complement to the latter’s more gloomy, post-punk-inclined drawl. Haycocks and Jimmy Bradbury are both the sort of guitarists to play as if they’re strapped to an electric chair, convulsing through every last power chord and dropping to their haunches in agony/ecstasy for their most heartfelt blasts of screechy tremolo. Paddy Murphy, too, is a fabulously committed drummer, leathering the snare drum at every opportunity and perpetually grimacing under the overhang of a dense bird’s nest of a hairdo. He’s so enthralled by the music that his hi-hat comes off worse for wear at one point, forcing Drunk Surfer to be stopped mid-song to let a crew member tighten up a few loose screws. When the time comes, he rips through the rest of the tune with such ferocity you wonder if he’s determined to break the hi-hat all over again.

Murphy’s hi-hat vendetta makes sense when you consider quite how compelling these songs are. The band tear through their best numbers early on, like the emotionally direct I’ve Never Met Anyone I Thought I Could Really Love (Until I Met You), which culminates in a perfect storm of overlapping countermelodies from Anson-O’Connell and Haycocks. Drunk Surfer is the youthful indie rock piledriver that puts Murphy’s drum kit to the test in its surging finale, but Alright Alright Alright similarly gets the blood racing, a punky two-minute sugar rush that barrels along like a runaway train. Their best song to date, though, is Shells, a song whose obtuse lyrics (“There are shells in the water and birds underneath”) are overpowered by the rousing melody and gorgeous vocal harmonies they’re set to. It’s also surely a deceptively difficult song to perform – the tantalising push and pull of tempo is what makes that chorus feel like such a euphoric release – but the band navigate it all with aplomb.

If there’s a weak song in this set it’s Slowly I’m Sure, a stripped-back ballad lacking the songwriting sophistication of Westside Cowboy’s other tracks, but really that’s picking at straws. For a band who only released their debut EP a few months ago, Westside Cowboy really are an amazingly precocious rock band with such a stratospheric trajectory you wonder whether this first ever visit to little old York will also be their last – a gold dust support slot for a certain Geese on their hotly anticipated European tour next spring beckons (Undertone will be reporting for duty at the Leeds date). “That type of luck don’t happen to folks like me,” Haycocks sings coyly on I’ve Never Met… like he’s Marty McFly in Back to the Future. Call it luck or talent, he better believe it: Westside Cowboy are on a one way ticket to the big time.