Few new artists of recent years have had as much furore surrounding them as Westside Cowboy; between two acclaimed EPs, a stint supporting Geese, and winning 2025’s Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition, the Manchester quartet, on paper, already have a lot to live up to. Which makes it all the more heartening that here, on their debut full-length, they refuse to take themselves too seriously, instead doubling down on their initial rough’n’ready brilliance to make good on their potential and then some. Across 11 tracks, ‘It Goes On’ expands the band’s Americana-tinged slacker palette, sidestepping potentially gimmicky territory to stand as a collection that’s far greater than the sum of its parts. In places, they channel The Wedding Present with galloping, mile-a-minute guitars (‘Worried Age’); in others, they nod to late ’60s / early ‘70s rock via The Velvet Underground (‘Kick Stones (The Boys)’) or even T.Rex (see the bluesy guitar underpinning ‘Dobro’); everywhere, they prove themselves to be masters of Pixies’ famed loud-quiet-loud dynamic shifts.

Production-wise, it’s deliberately scrappy, going a significant way to evoke the lightning-in-a-bottle energy of their live shows (see drummer Paddy Murphy’s work on ‘Paper Chains’, or the graduated, goosebump-inducing outro of setlist staple ‘Pin Up Boys’). But between the thrill of the chase, there are also more understated moments of real poignance. Amidst stunning four-part harmonies, bassist Aoife Anson O’Connell’s vocal echoes that of Adrianne Lenker (particularly on ‘Worried Age’ and ‘Coyote’), while the quietly heartwrenching couplets of ‘Take My Leaving As I Love You’ have a Cohen-esque air about them. Elsewhere, ‘Big Wheels’ borrows its title from ‘Proud Mary’, but trades the driving funk of that song’s best-loved version for contemplative musings on the passage of time, while ‘Patchwork’ dials down the band’s signature guitar squalls, making way for touches of twinkling piano before bursting into full-bodied catharsis. At once unaffected and affecting, ‘It Goes On’ holds a mirror up to Westside Cowboy’s current form, making no attempt to adorn or distort the reflection staring back. There’s no need: they rightly like what they see.