Song Of The Day: Steve Gnash – “Las Colinas Part 1”

Check Out The Incredibly Named Fort Worth Rocker Steve Gnash’s New Single, Which Was Released In Conjunction With His Own New Usher-Nodding Fragrance.

Welcome to Song of the Day, where we hip you to all the new local releases you should be caring about. By highlighting one new North Texas-sprung tune every week day, our hope is that you’ll find something new to love about the rich and abundant DFW music scene five days a week.

Steve Gnash – “Las Colinas Part 1”
RIYL: A sensory-heavy musical experience that can be enhanced with smell.
What else you should know: Usher may have written “Confessions (Interlude)” and “Confessions Part II,” and he may have five different celebrity-branded perfumes to his name. But he didn’t once think to name any of his fragrances “Confessions.”

Noticing this irrefutable void in the music and beauty world, Fort Worth rocker Steve Gnash decided to launch his new fragrance CONFE$$ION$ last Friday, in conjunction with the release of his new single “Las Colinas Part 1.” To celebrate, he played a single and fragrance release party at Denton house venue The Cave with Modern Modem, Native Fox and Beauty Parlor.

As if it wasn’t already evident with his innovative approach to branding and merchandising, Gnash is venturing into uncharted waters — and his most recent music output is no exception to that. “Las Colinas Part 1” possesses the signature power-pop song structure and lo-fi production one could expect from Gnash’s past releases, but the Moog instrumentals give things a more distinctive touch this time around.

The track’s opening guitar chords have reverb that gives off a Black Lips vibe and, by the second verse, Gnash ventures into his higher vocal register while singing about microdosing, thus adding even more to the track’s psychedelic sensibilities. But as “psychedelic” as this song is, it is also quaint and jangly in structure and aesthetic, channeling the likeness of C86 acts such as The Vaselines and Talulah Gosh.

There’s refreshing pacing to the song as well. Amounting to just three minutes and three seconds, the song doesn’t overindulge and actually concludes on a satisfying note. Gnash intricately toes the line between length and brevity the same way he has carefully toes the line between psychedelic and twee pop in his style.

It’s rather easy to identify Gnash by sound, sure. But now you can do so via smell as well.

Cover photo by Annie Nelson via Facebook.