Song of the Day: "Strange Taxidermy"

A column about music, and about how the music informs our lives. Today's author is Nate. See the previous songs HERE.

"Strange Taxidermy"

Westside Cowboy

from So Much Country 'Till We Get There EP

2026

The media will lie to you and let's keep it a buck I'll lie to you too but believe me Natalie that I'm telling you the truth right now.

So let's agree to this; you don't go from zero to Glastonbury side stages and opening for the Latest Last One True Rock Band without having to eat the Shindustry Shplant allegations like a full English with blood sausages and all. And fuck it, while we're getting along let's also agree that even if the idea of integrity has been purchased, pressed, juiced, and drained from the sin-blasted godless youth with nothing left to worship but the goddamn dollar, that there is still such a thing as shame and anyone buying their way up the wrung of the recently-deceased rock genre certainly would be bearers of that particular miracle.

And lo, these are the hurdles that Westside Cowboy must clear on its debut album, It Goes On. And what light through yonder window breaks; they goddamn do it for the most part.

Songs is the main thing, but a solid set of influences and some panache will go a long way. You know what a lot of kids got into during the pandemic? Hum, apparently, though all those kids are making PC music now, so goddamn if James Murphy wasn't putting his middle-aged penis right on the bruise all those long 20 years ago. But you know what Westside Cowboy was listening to, I'd bet the farm and the myth of American family farming on? Goddamn Modest Mouse back before they became the Grateful Dead for dudes who did too many narcotics to be into Wilco. Oh, laugh it up if you must, but check out what's happening rhythmically on "Well Done Kid, You Did It," then come look me in the eye and tell me that's not Jeremiah Green's music back when he was living in a Pacific Northwest shack and huffing degreaser. Peep these recurring moments of moody Built to Spill guitar whammy-bar sputterings and this overarching feeling of woe-isn't-me isolationism and tell me this has its bones in anything that was born after 9/11. Please be serious.

Lenderman has to come up in this conversation, because he must if any conversation that even suggests the idea of "country" in a rock context begins and ends with him. "Cowboy" is there in the name and it's not just a movie genre; these whippersnappers are trying to find their own Lonesome Crowded Liverpool, though the parts of the soup that reeked most of cowpunk have been steamed off. It's vibey, is the thing, and it gives that same easy-breezy frictionless hang that Lenderman has mastered and perhaps started to curdle a little bit. But that ease of use is about where it ends because you'll never walk away from It Goes On thinking that Westside Cowboy are just 'avin a laugh. Get your Dipset voice ready: these kids Really Mean It. This has its guts in the idea of writing in a journal, or writing on a LiveJournal at least, or a Tumblr, or whatever it was these dorks did when they wanted to confess their crushes to each other back whenever wherever it was when they were spilling hormones and guts on the internet sewer pipe. You can hear how embarrassing it all is, and you don't embarrass yourself unless you never really had a choice.

They've got a couple tricks, and one of them is to start banging on the toms and keep banging on the toms until everything else catches up. All the best songs here do that—"Well Done Kid, You Did It," "Worried Age," "Coyote"—and all the second-best songs start with that idea and yank the rug out before you get to fully shoot your wad—"Pin Up Boys," "Dobro." Sorry about that wad shooting thing I said a minute ago. It's all better than it has to be, especially if you're designed to break into a subgenre without any bonafides. Maybe it's Maybelline, or maybe they're just that good.