The hottest name in town, Westside Cowboy, took two sold-out nights at Gullivers in their stride as they played their biggest headline shows to date in what felt like a significant undersell. Over forty-five minutes the four-piece justified the mounting hype around them.
Exeter's Pushbike open up the evening. Musically strong, the twin-guitar and bass approach works really well, the songs flow in a way that only accomplished musicians on the same wavelength can achieve and the songwriting is equally strong. The vocals, which are shared, do tend to let them down in parts, mostly when they're shouting rather than singing, because when they lay off the attempts to deafen everyone in the room, there are some really good moments to accompany the music, their Camper Van Beethoven cover of Skinheads Bowling being a case in point.
The room fills up to the point of overheating for the headliners. It's a few months since we last saw them, but all the things that excited us about them are still there. Their ability to take a song from a full-on sonic assault to the tenderest moment at what feels like a flick of a switch but which is testament to the way they're atuned to each other and know how to control the pace, mood and intent of a song is still there. Keeping the audience on tenterhooks not knowing where the song is going to go next is a trick few can pull off but they feel like past masters at it already.
Reuben seems to be taking the lead vocal role more often, we noted this and others passed the same comment as we discussed later, but James, Aiofe and Paddy are all still significant contributors to the vocals as well as the music whether as lead or providing the backing vocals and harmonies that make the songs . They finish with the four of them in the middle of the crowd singing acapella. The swapping as well as the coming together of four vocalists again gives the songs depth and variety and holds the audience's attention - there's little of the annoying chat that seems to accompany the latest buzz band when they play headline shows to those curious about them or there just to post on their socials.
Their wonderful debut single I've Never Met Anyone I Thought I Could Really Love (Until I Met You) is dispatched early in the set, as if a statement to say they've got plenty more where that came from. Their biggest issue may be though that these songs are not the throwaway three-minute pop songs with the same structures that radio seems to favour these days, but the momentum they've got behind them right now might just sweep them past that if they get the choice of singles right. Live, they're about to spread their wings wider and pick up a whole new swathe of admirers.
Westside Cowboy's website can be found here and they are on Facebook, X and Instagram.
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