Westside Cowboy’s “Pin Up Boys” Got Heavier Every Time They Played It — Until It Became This

Westside Cowboy wrote “Pin Up Boys” a year and a half before they recorded it, using an acoustic guitar, a drum machine sample pad, and some screwdrivers as drumsticks. By the time they got to Greenmount Studios in Leeds to cut it with producer Loren Humphrey (Geese, Wunderhorse), the song had been played live so many times and had grown so much heavier and more aggro with each performance that the band decided the recording should just be a faithful version of what they’d been doing on stage. It was the longest-serving song on the album and the one they’d played the most. That was a blessing and a curse.

The result is a quiet-loud classic indie gut punch from the kind of band that knows exactly what they’re doing with that formula and why it still works. Reuben Haycocks opens the song almost alone, then the band comes in. The video, directed by Jack Shep of SNL UK, follows a fixed spotlight hunting a man through the dark until he splits it into two, and the whole thing begins to buckle and shatter. It captures the song’s preoccupation with self-control and the struggle to step outside your own shadow.

It Goes On arrives August 21 on Island Records. The band already sold out a headline UK run before anyone had heard the album, and the autumn tour includes a sold-out night at London’s O2 Forum Kentish Town and a sold-out Manchester Albert Hall. Pre-order below.

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