Westside Cowboy – It Goes On

Westside Cowboy are a Manchester band who seem to be in conversation with an imagined American alternative rock where everything happened at once. On their new record, it’s always near sunset, and a yawning summer lasts forever, a permanent state of proud melancholy. Taut yet fuzzy guitar textures dominate the record, splintered by the addition of chiming yet rhythmic synths that sometimes veer into a thrilling frenzy. They perform the same movement throughout – songs grow instrument by instrument, before the melody lifts everything into a swarm of warm feelings that fly before abruptly crashing. It’s like Camper Van Beethoven’s Take the Skinheads Bowling blown open, expanded into a whole album.

The effect is irresistible. Every time it’s about to get tired, the sheer joy of the whole endeavour carries it forward (although on Pin Up Boys it comes across a little too invested in itself). Paper Chains has moments of drear, but is made to soar by its grinning coming-of-age movie instrumentals. When this happens in Worried Age, the band simply vocalise ecstatically together for the last 20 seconds, before a stronger version of the riff cuts them, and the song, off. The album ends as laconically as their sub four-minute songs: 'That’s all', sighs singer Reuben Haycocks.

Listen to: Patchwork, Kick Stones (The Boys), You Could Have Died There On the Dancefloor