Brighton Gets “Britainicana” – Westside Cowboy at The Hope & Ruin
- Hannah Breen
- 5 hours ago
- 5 min read
Brighton in early February is not a particularly warm, welcoming place. The breeze charges forth from the sea with a relentless persistence that makes you question every life decision that led you outside in the first place. Nevertheless, I braved both the winter elements and an all-day FlixBus ride to The Hope & Ruin, hoping that the promise of sticky venue floors and a band whose name suggests something halfway between a spaghetti western and a student halls costume party would be enough to justify the expedition there.
The room was already abuzz when I arrived, just as support band Holly Head took to the stage. This was partly due to the inevitable excitement of a sold-out gig, but also to the audible ruckus drifting through the floorboards from the pub downstairs. The noise became a running joke later in the evening, with the band themselves occasionally pausing to comment on the chaos below. But once Westside Cowboy finally took to the stage, the room’s attention shifted decisively in their direction.
The four-piece (Jimmy Bradbury, Reuben Haycocks, Aoife Anson-O’Connell and Paddy Murphy) are currently one of those bands that you simply cannot seem to escape. In the best possible way, every music publication appears to be bartering for a feature, and for good reason. Formed in Manchester in 2023, they won the 2025 Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition and have since been steadily building a devoted fanbase. Already bagging support slots for names like Black Country, New Road and Blondshell, they are now supporting Geese on the European leg of their “Getting Killed” tour, a pairing that feels oddly perfect.
They opened with a cover of “Midnight Cowboy” by Santo & Johnny, its dreamy guitar melody drifting through the room like a quiet preface. It was a subtle way of easing the crowd into their own material, which followed immediately afterwards. Their songs showcase the band’s scrappy and unpretentious ethos. Nothing feels overly polished or self-conscious, yet there is something clearly deliberate in the way each note and lyric lands. It is the sound of musicians who understand their influences but have not yet felt the need to iron out their rougher edges.
Westside Cowboy themselves have jokingly coined the term “Britainicana” to describe their sound, a phrase Murphy admits he invented one morning in the bathroom before the band had even released any music. The idea, partly a joke and partly an artistic manifesto, captures the strangeness of growing up in Britain while being saturated in American cultural imagery. From films and television to music, the cowboys, road trips, and suburban teen mythology of American pop culture might have felt like the promised land if you were growing up in rural Lancashire. Attempting to become Marty McFly or Ferris Bueller in that far from romantic environment, Murphy has suggested, was always destined to fail. But those failures produced something stranger and more interesting: American pop culture filtered through British surroundings, and again through folk traditions, punk, indie, and whatever other sounds caught their attention along the way.
Those folk traditions surfaced most during the quieter moments of the set. “Shells”, one of the evening’s small but unforgettable highlights, began with a gently finger-picked guitar and a two-part vocal harmony so simple it was almost devastating. The arrangement was soft, momentarily suspending the room in a moment of stillness. For a brief minute or two, the entire venue seemed to lean forward slightly, quietly mouthing the words, as even the background chatter from the pub downstairs became irrelevant. Then, just as quickly, the spell lifted. Less than two minutes in, head-nodding drums returned, electric guitars slid back into the mix, and the song gradually lifted into something warmer and more energetic.
It is a small but telling example of the band’s range. Westside Cowboy move fluidly between folk tenderness and loose indie-rock momentum without ever feeling muddled. Instead, it feels like exactly what it probably is, a group of musicians in their early twenties still joyfully exploring the boundaries of what their band might become. Their most streamed track, “Don’t Throw Rocks”, was greeted with immediate recognition. The crowd’s response of enthusiastic whoops and fists in the air from people who had clearly been waiting for this song made it feel like a cult favourite already, the kind of track you can imagine soundtracking some mid-2000s coming-of-age montage along Brighton Pier.
The audience itself was more varied than I expected. Indie Brighton gigs often attract a very particular demographic, usually identifiable by a suspiciously expensive Carhartt jacket and an Arc’teryx beanie. Those people were certainly present, but they shared the room with middle-aged men leaning against the bar, and younger students that looked like they’d only recently discovered the band.
The closing song, “In the Morning”, transformed the space completely. On record, the track leans gentle and almost lullaby-like. Live, it became joyous and communal, as the band crowded in the centre of the stage around a single microphone, voices overlapping in loose harmony, whilst the audience enthusiastically joined in. By the second chorus, the communal energy felt closer to a Dublin pub trad session than a small Brighton indie show. But the resemblance wasn’t imagined. The band have spoken openly about their love of English, Irish, and Scottish folk, and Aoife Anson-O’Connell has cited Irish folk group Lankum as an early inspiration.
There’s a feeling of unpolished energy throughout the gig that reflects the band’s origins. Westside Cowboy began as a casual project amongst friends orbiting the University of Manchester music scene, as a way to play together for the hell of it. The sudden attention from competitions and tours may have arrived unexpectedly, but never once did they feel out of their depth. The band doesn't play to impress or to confirm some indie credibility. They play because they genuinely enjoy it, and that excitement and passion is infectious. This is a band still learning and exploring, relishing every moment on stage together, and it shows.
Westside Cowboy already feels like a band people are going to keep talking about. With their upcoming tour supporting Geese, their profile will almost certainly continue to grow. I suspect this won’t be the last time I find myself travelling out of my way to see them. Though ideally next time, it will be slightly warmer. Or at the very least, slightly less windy.
Westside Cowboy's latest EP So Much Country 'Till We Get There was released on January 16, 2026. Listen on Spotify and check out the band on Instagram.
Edited by Gia Dei, Music Co-Editor.
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