There hasn’t been a whole lot of quality country music coming across the international airwaves recently, but in his latest release, Carlos Washington delivers a Texas-style tonality sure to get fans around the world invigorated once more. Country’s greatest stars and songwriters have all had one thing in common – a deep, profound love of Americana, and that’s precisely what Carlos Washington’s Steel Horse Swing bring to the table in their new single “Little Bit of Texas” from the album of the same name. Driven by an affectionate western swing that you don’t come across every day anymore, “Little Bit of Texas” feels like the shot of adrenaline the country genre needed this spring, and though it’s coming from an underground artist, it couldn’t be much more accessible.
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The fiddle parts here have a lot of edge, and in some ways, they define the vocal harmony more than any of the other string parts do. There’s a case to be made that “Little Bit of Texas” would be just as affective were it an instrumental instead of the familiar, lyric-adorned country song that it is in this present state. Carlos Washington’s Steel Horse Swing are locked onto the groove from the get-go in this single, and even when they’re working in perfect synchronicity with each other, there’s rarely an instance where one element in the mix can’t be distinguished from another. This is cohesive chemistry at its finest, and it’s something that I feel has been missing from the country establishment for too long now.
There’s a wonderfully enduring structure to this composition that speaks volumes about what kind of a songwriter Carlos Washington really is beneath the thematic components in his verses. Songs like “Little Bit of Texas” offer a unique insight into the approach that an artist takes when trying to meld evocative melodies with direct and to the point lyricism, and in this situation, Washington shows off much more poise than I would have expected any player to (let alone an indie rebel). You don’t have to be a critic like myself to tell that this guy is all about the music, and thanks to his keen attention to detail exhibited in his new single, I think a lot of people are going to share my sentiments with regards to his talent.
I wasn’t following Carlos Washington’s Steel Horse Swing before, but I’m catching on to the buzz-factor in this single for sure. “Little Bit of Texas” is everything that I dig about old school western music; a sense of freedom in its harmonies, a relaxed rhythm to lead us there, and most of all, a smoky-voiced cowboy who doesn’t try and placate his audience with nonsensical verses and poetic props. Washington is not trying to fit in with some sort of a corporate-sponsored trend in this track – if you ask me, he’s making it more than clear just how much of an individual he is both on and off the stage. I’m game for more, and plenty of other country fans are bound to agree with me.
Levi Colston