Red Guitar's second release, "Beauty Will Save the World" (2006), offers a robust flowering of sonic delight that no doubt reflects their personnel expansion. The five-piece Kansas City outfit added several new members since their 2003 album, "Based on a Blue Story", and the musical evolution is evident. The alt-country feel that earned early comparisons to the Counting Crows and Neil Young has developed into a sound that defies easy categorization. Sun-drenched overlays of guitars and harmonies, drips of melting synth, and rhythmic variations pepper the attack of singer-songwriters John McKenna and Nick Nave. The result features tracks which first heard apart might seem dissonant, but the bands superior craftsmanship backed by a concise 10-song format creates a mysterious coherence that is rare among popular music today. From the marching cadence of opener V-Day, to the psychedelic soul of The Sting, Red Guitar has claimed their own musical territory that owes as much to U2 as to Springsteen.
2008 found the band whittled down to a four-piece machine, a mixture of The Fray and Coldplay and Ryan Adams, the best pop intentions mixing with their alt-country past sailing into the glorious future...
Aurora
Red Guitar Lyrics
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She walked down to the beach, wrote her secrets in the sand
She said, this is the only place, that makes any sense, and she said
I'm lonely for somewhere I've never been.
I'm lonely for someone I've never met.
You thought it must of been God, coming down with his angles, and you said
I'm lonely for somewhere I've never been.
I'm lonely for someone I've never met.
Time bends the scenes, and time bends my mind
Blistered by the sound of a million good-byes
I'm lonely for somewhere I've never been.
I'm lonely for someone I've never met.
And yeah, yeah it's coming down
Yeah, it's coming down
Flash across the sky, making fun of candle lights
God's driving his big car, behind the mountainside
The lyrics to Red Guitar's song Aurora captures the feeling of loneliness and longing for something or someone that seems distant and unattainable. The song begins with the image of a woman who writes her secrets in the sand. She finds solace in the beach, which seems like the only place that makes sense to her. She expresses her loneliness for a place she has never been to and someone she has never met. The beach serves as a metaphor for the woman's desire to escape her current reality and find something more meaningful.
The chorus repeats the same lines, emphasizing the woman's sense of yearning for something she has yet to experience. As the song progresses, it shifts to a group perspective as "we" walk down to the beach with strange lights in the sky. The lights are interpreted as a divine presence, perhaps God and his angels. The line, "You thought it must of been God, coming down with his angles," shows how the group sees the lights as a sign of hope and guidance. But the loneliness and longing persist despite the presence of something divine.
The lyrics take a poetic turn with the lines, "Time bends the scenes and time bends my mind, blistered by the sound of a million good-byes." It conveys the idea that the passage of time warps our perceptions and memories of the past, leaving us with the pain of goodbyes. The song ends with the image of a flash across the sky that makes fun of candle lights, and the idea of God driving his big car behind the mountainside. It's a surreal image that leaves room for interpretation, but it emphasizes the themes of longing and seeking something beyond our reach.
Line by Line Meaning
She walked down to the beach, wrote her secrets in the sand
She left her own trace on the world, but only where it cannot stay
She said, this is the only place, that makes any sense, and she said
This moment in time, at this place in space is the only thing that seems truly real
I'm lonely for somewhere I've never been.
I'm searching for an unknown place where everything will fall into place
I'm lonely for someone I've never met.
I'm searching for someone to share experiences with that I have not yet encountered
We walked down to the beach, with the strange lights in the sky.
Walking along the shore, awestruck by the lights above, everything felt surreal
You thought it must of been God, coming down with his angles, and you said
The beauty of the unexplained makes it seems like it must be divine in origin
Time bends the scenes, and time bends my mind
Time distorts perception, altering the way I experience the world
Blistered by the sound of a million good-byes
Overwhelmed by the pain of saying farewell to loved ones
And yeah, yeah it's coming down
It's all coming to an end, inevitable and unstoppable
Flash across the sky, making fun of candle lights
The sky itself seems to mock the frailty of human attempts at illuminating the world
God's driving his big car, behind the mountainside
The higher forces, which we perceive as divine, are just out of reach and beyond our understanding
Contributed by Jack H. Suggest a correction in the comments below.