Words and Photos – John Hayhurst

The Brudenell is the kind of venue that thrives on nights like this: sticky floors, low ceilings, a crowd packed in so tight that the air itself seems to hum. On a wet Leeds winter night, it’s the perfect pressure cooker for a Manchester band whose reputation has been growing faster than their catalogue.

However, before Westside Cowboy even stepped onto the Brudenell stage, Holly Head had already charged the room with nervous energy. As the support act, they commanded attention immediately, snapping the crowd out of bar-queue chatter and into something far more focused. Jagged guitars cut through the room, complex basslines locked into elastic grooves, and the drums drove everything forward with restless urgency. The sound felt tightly coiled, buzzing with intent, perfectly suited to this venue.

At the front, the band carried themselves with an unblinking focus that made the set feel confrontational in the best way. Every pause crackled, every release landed hard. Songs like No Country Is An Island pulsed with a political undercurrent that felt embedded rather than announced, carried by rhythm and repetition as much as by lyric. The crowd responded instinctively — bodies edging closer, heads nodding, eyes fixed — drawn into the band’s tense, groove-heavy momentum.

By the time Holly Head closed their set, the room had been recalibrated. The Brudenell buzzed with the low hum and chatter of discovery, the unmistakable sense of a band having shifted from background noise to conversation starter. As they cleared the stage, anticipation lingered — not just for the headliners, but for whatever Holly Head might do next. In the context of the night, their performance was less like an opening slot and more like a declaration of intent.

Westside Cowboy open not with bombast, but with atmosphere. The familiar instrumental of Midnight Cowboy (John Barry) tease hangs in the air, a slow cinematic unfurling that feels like a deep breath before the plunge. Then the drums crash in, guitars blur into motion, and suddenly the place is heaving. It’s instantly clear why Westside Cowboy’s so-called “Britainicana” sound only really makes sense live. On record it’s charming; here, it’s physical. You feel it in your chest.

Paddy Murphy screams “Westside Cowboy” and ‘I’ve Never Met Anyone I Thought I Could Really Love (Until I Met You)’ lands earlier than expected, and it already feels like their communal anthem rather than their debut single. Reuben Haycocks delivers the verses with a cracked, confessional intensity, while Aoife Anson-O’Connell’s beautiful harmonies float in from the side like a second internal monologue. The crowd sings along immediately, shouting lines back with the kind of conviction usually reserved for bands ten years deeper into their careers.

One of the most striking things about Westside Cowboy is how little they resemble a traditional frontperson-plus-band setup. Vocals shift constantly. On ‘Alright Alright Alright’, Jimmy Bradbury takes the mic, turning the song into a joyous, Johnny Cash infused ragged stomp that pulls as much from country storytelling as it does indie abrasion. The guitars scrape and snarl, Paddy Murphy’s drumming pushing everything forward with barely contained chaos. It sounds like something born in a cramped rehearsal room and never overthought, which only adds to its impact here.

The Brudenell crowd is loud, forgiving, and deeply invested. When a pedal misbehaves or a string slips out of tune, Haycocks laughs it off with self-deprecating ease “I’m getting everything wrong tonight, my A-string has turned into a G-string”. This is a band still visibly surprised by how much people care, and that sense of disbelief gives the set an infectious warmth.

‘Drunk Surfer’ is the night’s release valve. Its start-stop dynamics turn the room into a single organism, everyone bracing for the silences and exploding together when the noise comes back in. Voices are so loud they almost overpower the band, drawing grins from the stage.

‘Shells’ is slower and more expansive, its gentle opening blooms with the lyric “So I’ll just sleep with a gun” and turns it into a crashing crescendo that has people jumping and swaying despite the lack of space.

What’s most impressive is how confidently Westside Cowboy handle contrast. The raucous moments hit harder because the quieter ones are given room to breathe. ‘Don’t Throw Rocks’ rolls out with a bittersweet, road-trip nostalgia, while ‘The Wahs’ burns with scrappy, end-of-set energy, Haycocks joking about getting everything wrong – even as the band sound anything but.

The closing moment, ‘In The Morning’, strips everything back. One drum. One mic. Voices leaning in close. The Brudenell falls into a rare, reverent hush before singing along, stomping the floor in time. It’s messy, intimate, and oddly profound – a reminder that underneath the buzz, the festivals, and the hype, this is still a band built on shared voices and shared space.

The lucky ones here, have caught Westside Cowboy at the exact right moment: still rough around the edges, still laughing at their own mistakes, but already selling out rooms like The Brudenell with ease.

It’s nights like this that give you that warm feeling that there is still a future in live music and these two relatively new bands tonight have “arrived” – and I’m already impatient to see what comes next.