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Through now-signature mock-serious lyricism and monotonous voice inflections, snarky and sharp, “Have A Pint” recognises, and celebrates, a communal sense of nihilism in the fallout of cowboy-slaughter wreckage: “Look outside, what a sight / Everything’s fucked, mate, everybody sucks, but that’s alright.” The track quickly erupts into a raw, intense mishmash of drums, bass and amplified roars, before mellowing ever so slightly for their rendition of the viral Lady Gaga interview-turned-meme – “Bus, club, another club, another club.”
The fantastical lore behind the inception of the Scottish punk prodigies stretches back to “the great disaster” of ‘04. Megan Pollock and Desmond Johnston are two bezzie mates who “met on the job” hunting a cowboy named Slim Jim. They chased a lead at the music course at Edinburgh Napier University, he managed to get away, but the two have stuck together ever since. “There’s not many of us left, and we were like, ‘we might as well do some tunes, no one else doing it in Scotland,’” says Pollock. You're probably wondering, why are they hunting cowboys? According to Johnston, “They’re the worst things. Have you seen Beyoncé? Lizard people, the lot of them.”
Cowboy Hunters’ ridiculously titled forthcoming EP, EPeepee, is set for a March 20 release, and follows a run of unfiltered, equally furious, singles. From the EP’s first drop “Money for Drugs”, to the hilariously direct “Mating Calls”. A recent cover flip of Princess Superstar and Mason’s dance classic “Perfect (Exceeder)” helped gain momentum for the band’s music over on social media, currently they stand at 91K monthly listeners on Spotify. On fan interactions, Pollock responds: “When people started coming to gigs from just finding us on TikTok, that was like, “Oh, that's pretty cool. Does work. At gigs, people started coming to them from a bit further away, which is nice. I don’t know if there's one thing that's sticking out... when they buy us drinks.”
For Johnston, he’s especially appreciative of those on the same level as Pollock and him, who get the sense of humour of Cowboy Hunters: “You don't want people being fucking scared to speak to you because you're some fucking big time famous band. We're always the same, no matter where we go. We always slag London whenever we go there, and they seem to like it. I think that's why people are sort of getting behind us, we don't really change who we are, where we are. We bring the vibe, we are the vibe.”
The band bring an unpredictable performance energy to their wild, drunken gigs. “I’m from Shetland, and that’s all there is to do,” declares Johnston on drinking culture. As brash as they come across, Johnston admits he wants people to feel seen at their shows. Especially with the Lady Gaga sample, which “Have A Pint” was made to revolve around. “It’s quite queer coded, it’s like a little wink and a nudge to the crowd,” he says. “It's written almost like a beat, it very much fit the vibe of what we were going for. It kind of was like, can you copyright a YouTube video? We're just gonna ride that out and see if we get sued by Lady Gaga. We've got a love-hate relationship with Lady Gaga.”
The musical style of Cowboy Hunters is uniquely their own, contrary to expectation, Pollock name-drops Pitbull’s “Fireball” as an all-time favourite track. It’s easy to label them as punk, Johnston himself describes their sound as “recession punk”, but it’s only because of the limited resources at their current disposal. “We sound like how we sound because we can't really sound like anything else, there's only two of us, and we only have the equipment that we have, and it's the limitations of that.”
“Half A Pint” was written in half an hour at a service station, on the way to a practice, Johnston started freestyling. Speaking to the provocative music-making approach Cowboy Hunters conveys, “I don’t think we really put much thought into it,” he says. “It's all just sort of done on Logic on my laptop, that's the sketch of the songs. Then bring them to a practice room and colour them in, really. It's a very boring process.”
Cowboy Hunters’ riotous reputation have earned them slots supporting Franz Ferdinand, English Teacher, and Bob Vylan. The announcement of EPeepee comes ahead of extensive live dates, but as much as it is a new package, the band have already brought the EP’s songs on the road with them for two years. “Kind of excited to get past it and get to the newer stuff,” says Johnston.
Booked to support Sleaford Mods across their Irish tour, their next headline performance on February 6th, at Signature Brew in Haggerston, London, is in keeping with the spirit of their new single. Available exclusively on the night, they’ve partnered with the brewery for a limited run of one-off Cowboy Hunters-branded beer, Chunters Cherry Brew. Grab one, grab five, while you can.
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