If there’s a theme running through the debut album by Westside Cowboy, it’s the sense of time barrelling forward. It’s why the Manchester quartet—made up of Jimmy Bradbury (vocals, guitar), Reuben Haycocks (vocals, guitar), Aoife Anson-O’Connell (vocals, bass) and Paddy Murphy (drums)—called the record It Goes On. “It’s not a concept album,” Haycocks tells Apple Music, “but it just so happens that when we finished all the songs and looked back over them, there were themes of time moving and things in motion. When we saw that pattern, we then saw that in the music too.” It chimes nicely with the fact that the band have been on a constant upward curve since forming in 2023, their early single releases introducing a thrillingly captivating indie-rock band for whom a big breakthrough seemed inevitable. Produced by Geese collaborator Loren Humphrey, It Goes On builds on that promise and then some with its 11 hook-laden songs that weave between emotive guitar pop, dusty Americana-tinged contemplatives, ramshackle rock ’n’ roll and euphoric builds. Their guiding principle was that It Goes On had to sound like a debut album. “The only thing we were tied to was that we really wanted it to sound like a first album, we really wanted it to sound young and energetic,” says Haycocks. On that note, it’s mission accomplished. There’s a sense of exuberance about It Goes On that is infectious, a record both imbued with the intoxicating alchemy of the band’s live shows, but it also has a depth to it that reveals more of itself with repeated listens. Here, Haycocks and his bandmates talk us through the album, track by track. “Kick Stones (The Boys)” Reuben Haycocks: “We always had a love-hate, mostly hate, relationship with the song—we felt like after playing it live loads, we’d maybe lost the original intention of what the song was meant to be. I was personally against having it on the album because I hated it so much. But we thought, in order for this song to still exist and in order for it to work, we need to take it back to its original form. It was originally not supposed to be this epic thing, it was supposed to just be a subtle builder of a song. With the help of Loren and his recording style, it ended up changing loads from the way that we did it live. I think it changed our view on how we wanted the record to sound—and it ended up being the touchstone of the album.” “Paperchains” RH: “That was supposed to be in the bin too!” Paddy Murphy: “I remember Reuben playing that one and being like, ‘Oh this is great, this is so fun.’ And then I think he liked it for about two days and then just despised it for the rest, so we spent the six months before recording it trying to convince him that it was worth giving time to, which can get pretty exhausting. I really love this song.” “Dobro” Jimmy Bradbury: “This came from being very tired after tour and the usual thing of ‘I’m quite sleepy, let me go make some music,’ and I plugged straight into a little four-track cassette recorder. It’s something that came out very easily.” PM: “This song felt cool because it was the first time I think we’ve ever like slightly leant back in this band and just been like, ‘We’re just gonna make this song feel like it’s trying to strut somewhere.’ It’s one of Westside Cowboy’s first strutting songs.” “Well Done Kid, You Did It” RH: “This came from a time where I got really stressed about the idea of writing an album. So I started writing a song every day. I was forcing myself to write songs so they were all pretty terrible, but then one day, ‘Well Done Kid, You Did It’ came about. I think that’s why it’s one of the more simple songs lyrically on the album. It was really trying to de-pressure the whole thing. It was midway through a quite a turbulent, stressful time in the band, which essentially correlates directly to all of our lives. It’s such a big part of our lives now that whatever happens in the band is pretty much what we’ll be feeling. We’d been listening to a load of Modest Mouse and we were like, ‘Let’s try and do an emo dance track.’” “Worried Age” RH: “We’d seen LCD Soundsystem playing, and I was like, ‘Oh man, I really want to write a song like that!’ Then, it was this strange 10-minute long, New Order-y blues song. We played it once at our second headline show. We put it on the back burner for ages and then we were like, ‘Let’s give it another go and try and make it more of a song.’ The lyrics try to encompass what it’s like to be the age that we were at when we were writing the song. It’s not really about much specific.” PM: “It was another one of those songs that had a lot of different iterations. We all had a big Future Islands phase around the time that it got finished. I remember Aoife listening to their album In Evening Air a lot at the time and that became a new reference point—of it feeling emotional but still the closest thing we have to a dance song, or at least us trying to do a dance song.” “Big Wheels” JB: “This is a song that I had for a while, maybe near the start of the band. It’s about the feeling of repetition and being stuck in a certain place where there aren’t many things you can do to counteract it. It just continues to go and the big wheels keep on turning.” “Pin Up Boys” RH: “We just did it exactly how we played it live. We were like, ‘Well, if people want to hear this song, they’re gonna get to hear the most disgusting version of the song,’ ’cause it was the third time we were recording it and we were honestly a bit pissed off ’cause we were like, ‘This song hasn’t been working but we have to do it.’ It was one of the toughest songs on the album to get right because it stopped sounding like music to us very early on. I don’t really know how we got there in the end. The lyrics are about self-control, quite generally.” JB: “It’s one of the angstiest recordings we have on the album and it comes out of pure frustration.” “Coyote” Aoife Anson-O’Connell: “We had a lot of fun recording it, playing around with percussion and overdubs. We wanted to keep it quite sparse. Sometimes with Westside Cowboy, the guitars and the angst and the speed make people feel quite happy, but a lot of the stuff we write is a bit sad or bleak. This one is similar in that, but quite angry, which is rare. Not saying that’s a good thing, but it’s the truth.” “Patchwork” JB: “This was another idea of mine that I didn’t think would go anywhere or have anything to it. It came from another late-night session of just a guitar and a vocal. I’m still deciding what it means to me, but we’ll hopefully get there one day.” “Take My Leaving as I Love You” RH: “This was as simple as, ‘I’m gonna sit down and write a song now.’ I’m very proud of this one lyrics-wise. It looks at how I was feeling at the time. The recording of it is strange. The last two songs on the album were taken from the pre-production sessions that we had—we went over to Loren’s house in upstate New York and set up in his living room. We considered the idea of making it a full-band thing but ultimately we thought that it was best kept as simple as possible. This might have been the first take we did so I was not arsed about it, I was thinking about what I was gonna have for tea. When I went downstairs to Loren’s basement to see the others, they were like, ‘Right, well that’s it,’ and I was like, ‘No, I wasn’t trying, that can’t be the take. I was thinking about my tea!’ But they didn’t let me have another go.” JB: “We were very adamant that that was the take. It was so good.” “You Could Have Died There on the Dancefloor” PM: “This was another song that we tried a couple of different ways. The last two songs on the album are actually the oldest recordings. This song, Reuben hated again.” RH: “It sounded like a Christmas song, the way we used to do it.” PM: “We just took that original demo, put some new vocals on it, maybe like one extra guitar and that’s the song. A lot of albums tend to end with this real emotional flourish. We kind of liked the idea having something that feels quietly uplifting. Sentiment-wise, it made sense to end with it because the last lyric is, ‘I am everything but perfect/But I’m trying, so please keep me around.’ We liked the idea that it was the last thing that people hear on the album.”