Westside Cowboy sound new but seem to come from an old place. Surrounded by 1978 Fender Twin Reverbs, well-thumbed Wem catalogues, a four-track recorder and spools of cassette tape the Manchester four-piece are made up of Aoife Anson O’Connell, James (Jimmy) Bradbury, Paddy Murphy and Reuben Haycocks. With a sound raw as a carpet burn, they ride a thrilling lo-fi boxcar tuned to the melodic precision of Teenage Fanclub and held together with the slacker cool of Pavement. For most bands this would be enough, but not for Westside Cowboy. Just when you think you have them pinned, they career the entire thing into a brick wall of country, trad and early harmony-coated, major-key rock’n’roll. They call this process ‘Britainicana’. A portmanteau of the band’s own making to describe American culture digested by English people in small towns with almost nothing in the way of cosmopolitan sheen. “Think kids in double denim and Converse eating Greggs vegan sausage rolls.” It’s alarming and exhilarating in equal measures and marks them out as a band perpetually on the verge of losing control but having too good a time to notice the smoke screaming out from under the wheels.

After circumnavigating each other in various bands, what initially began as an inside joke – a welcome distraction from mediocre employment and higher education – has quickly gotten out of hand, meaning that they now have to moderately apply themselves to it.“It was James’ idea to get together and play some old folk/skiffle songs just for a laugh. We were visiting him in Johnny Roadhouse at the time. He had the idea to call it WSCB after the cowboys who moved to New York to work lines after the west dried up.” A bassist was needed however, enter one Aoife Anson O’Connell, a cellist who Paddy & Reuben had been friends with since Freshers week. Despite never touching a guitar before, she took to it quickly. “What can we say? The little fella has the spirit.” The result is a band living on their wits. Nothing about their world feels pretentious or contrived. Stripped-back and sincere, this entourage of musical misfits can squeeze the ancient soul out of a four-part harmony while sat in the pub playing cards.

Not short of admirers, early praise has come from the likes of Rolling Stone, Uncut, Stereogum, Pitchfork, Rough Trade, Paste, The NME, DIY, The Line of Best Fit, DORK, So Young, Clash. Following four heroic performances at The Great Escape, where they were the talk of the festival, radio came out in force and the band were playlisted at BBC 6 Music on their second single with primary support from Huw Stephens, Steve Lamacq, Nick Grimshaw, and Jo Whiley (BBC Radio 2). Matt Wilkinson (Apple 1), KEXP and John Kennedy (Radio X) also lined up to call themselves fans. With the Spotify and Apple Music’s editorial teams firmly on board, there’s lashing of love for the band’s artistry.

Freshly signed to a partnership deal between indie heavyweights of note Heist or Hit & Nice Swan, winning Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition & teaming up with Mercury Music Prize winner Lewis Whiting of English Teacher on production, debut single ‘I’ve Never Met Anyone I Thought I Could Really Love (Until I Met You)’, starts with a frenetic caterwaul. The band’s name screamed in a battle cry by drummer Paddy. It’s a flag in the sand moment. A territorial statement. Almost immediately the drums start rhythmically convulsing with a torrential rattle adjacent to The Pixies’ ‘Bone Machine’ and we’re lifted into a three-chord assault that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand to attention. Authentic, fidgety and immediate, the guitars crackle like a twinkling bed of kindling primed to ignite the combustible chorus vocals. Aoife’s voice is particularly flammable. Melodic and defined, when she reaches volume it’s like a flute being shunted through an overdrive pedal. Recorded live, you get the sense that this is a band hunched around a single microphone in a dynamic that seems almost pre-rock’n’roll. A group rolling their sleeves up and labouring. Beyond ego, all feel. All for the sake of the song. “We like the guitars and drums being loud and the vocals having to fight to get above them somewhat. Not in a shoegaze way, more in the old crap 1950s PA way.” they admit. Abrupt shifts in tone and volume rush the ear, plugging the canal with a gluey warmth; an antidote to the colourless monotony of playlist fodder.

Second single ‘Shells’ ups the Americana, but far from the frenzy of the debut, this time the 1min 28 sec ‘intro’ explores the fragile states oft stalked by Sparklehorse or the Drag City back catalogue. Territories where each reverbed, creamy, guitar pluck is at the forefront of the recording as if the ambient mics have been fully exposed to each bristling, crackle of magic coming their way. The thick mids and ghostly harmonies eventually give way, and we’re reintroduced to the familiar snarl of overdriven guitars and pummelling drum fills. Flipping the two side of the same coin so expertly is no mean feat & a trick that would expose lesser writers but it’s here that Westside Cowboy solidified themselves as the real deal.

Starting out 12 months ago, the band’s first show was in a coffee shop. Equipped with three or four songs and the caffeine jitters, they embraced a skiffle slant. “We were inspired by what we thought early British rock n roll shows would have been like. We think back to the Quarrymen at the Jacaranda, where all the band members and gig attendees would have been too young to drink, so they would drink coffee instead and get hopped up that way. We like to think that these shows, although scrappy and maybe quite traditional sounding, would’ve had a crazy, almost punk energy to it.” A month passed before they took to the stage again (this time with five songs) for a charity event put on by a friend. With nothing on the horizon, it could well have been the band’s final performance. On a whim, they put a chopped up clip of them playing live online and the rest is history. Offers poured in and it’s easy to understand why. Exhilaratingly, their performances are the musical equivalent of a defibrillator, delivering high-energy shock after shock directly to the heart. In a transmissible instant, the snap of plectrums on guitar strings judders the edges of the nervous system. For a band so steeped in the 1950s, folk & skiffle – before rock was considered art – they understand what it means to be present in a room and the transformative power that holds. When they dive into the audience for the final song, furnished with nothing more than an acoustic, a floor tom and their voices the realisation is one of community. Or, as the band describe it themselves: “The loudest love songs ever. Blunt, but beautiful in their way. The message and sentiment is inescapable.”

Debut EP ‘This Better be Something Great’ is rammed with nu-generational indie. It’s been a while since something so era-defining dropped but you get the impression that Westside Cowboy are about to become a reference point, held in similar acclaim to Pavement and Pixies. ‘Alright, Alright, Alright’ is a barn dance of headrush guitars & blitzkrieg drums. Fuzz pedals and distortion leaking out of the track’s edges with such ferocity that it might as well have been produced by Julian Assange. ‘Drunk Surfer’ is a future classic. An indie anthem of Broken Social Scene sensibility and proportions. Razor-sharp. Exhilarating. White-Knuckle. The track’s only pause for breath, the delivery of the spine-tingling confession: ‘you’re scaring me now, you’re scaring me now, you, and every bone in my body looks for the quickest way out.’  Closer ‘Slowly I’m Sure’ is a cowboy song in every sense. Country-tinged and so trad it could eat a bowl of cactus, the track brings the collection full circle from the initial cry of ‘WESTSIDE. COWBOY’ that opened proceedings.

Thoughtlessness is oft maligned with negative associations, but many forget it contains a baked-in intuitiveness. Spend too long on something and the magic dissipates. It’s this philosophy that stands Westside Cowboy apart. “The faster and less thought out the better.“  It’s about prioritising only the essential in order to override the cerebral cortex and arrive at the unconscious, where only the greatest songs reside like rare Pokémon waiting on a master. “We like the idea of making something that feels totally timeless, songs that could be sung in a pub by a group of old drunks in 50 years’ time.” they state. “When WSCB started, we were all struggling to write music due to the pressures of perfectionism. We found that if we pretended to be different people when writing the songs, we could never go wrong. If a bad song was written, it was the cowboy. Not us.” The result is songs about old horses, prairie lust, the company dime, and the below average gunslingers of Northwest England.

So where would this group of broom-tail tenderfoots go if they were invisible? “The pub and/or Graceland.” Do they have hidden talents? Only if you count packing the car (equipment Tetris), Diablo and unicycles. And a motto? “Sell out, rock and roll!” It doesn’t get more authentic than that, and right now there’s none more authentic than Westside Cowboy!