BY: DIGITAL WAX MEDIA STAFF

 

The Scarlet Goodbye released their newest single “Raylene” on Friday, the third from the band’s upcoming album El Camino Adios.

 

”Raylene” follows the release of singles “Speedway” and “To Feel the Sun,” all of which are building up to the group’s much anticipated sophomore effort.

 

The albums third single opens almost abruptly with just vocals and guitar, with the song’s title presented as the very first thing the listener hears. Vivid lyrical imagery and fluid arpeggios create an almost psychedelic sensation within the first four bars of the tune – a feat made all the more impressive by how stark the arrangement is up to this point.

 

 

Keep in mind that we’re only about 17 seconds into the song at this point, and this sort of other world has already been conjured before the drums even make an appearance. The opening lyrics, which coincidentally themselves feel a bit like a fever dream, read:

 

“Raylene, I saw you in a fever dream/ an angel in the guillotine/ You were closer to God than anyone I’d ever seen”

 

The undercurrent of psychedelia within the track only seems to proliferate as the arrangement becomes more expansive, with the tinge of an English sensibility hinted at in preceding single “To Feel the Sun” being ramped up substantially here. By the tune’s first refrain, between the vocal harmonies and mentions of tangerines, it almost feels like we’re in full-blown Sgt. Pepper territory, but in the best possible way.

 

Despite its fairly danceable tempo and pleasant melodic passages, “Raylene” harbors an inherent sadness within its core that lifts with the track’s more accessible elements as a sort of conceptual counterpoint. The lyrics deal with mortality and the fleeting nature not only of our relationships with others, but of others themselves.

 

One of the track’s early lyrics reads:

”Sliding down a carousel/ Didn’t think it’d be our last farewell”

 

These types of moments are always jarring in hindsight. Though as a concept as old as time, it should be cliche by this point, it’s just as heavy as it ever was for anybody to mentally revisit a final interaction with a lost friend, loved one, or even acquaintance.

 

Much of the existential wallop that inevitably comes on the heels of these internal exercises lies in the mundanity of these final interactions. As, generally speaking, death is impossible to predict, we tend not to place a lot of value on the “little moments” until such a time as they become moments of the utmost significance – moments that all too often we wish we could rewrite or, at the very least, experience just one more time.

 

“Raylene” was, in fact, written in the aftermath of a funeral for a friend, as The Scarlet Goodbye’s Dan Murphy explains it.

“I thought about how hard it was for family members and friends to deliver a eulogy at such a somber and sad affair,” says Murphy. “The track is lifted by the incredible chorale singing by members of the See Change Treble Choir – they brought so much lift and blissful meditation to this track, and we are humbled and eternally grateful.”

 

The friend for which the funeral had been held had, according to Murphy, written “We live to live – we live to die, We live to laugh, we live to cry” in his senior class yearbook. This passage would ultimately have a profound influence on what would become “Raylene.”

 

When the track really kicks into gear, the lead vocal is pushed to near-anguish as deeply poetic lyrical passages question the nature of things and suggest that perhaps there isn’t even a greater good at all. These are the types of emotions to which anyone who has dealt with significant loss can relate; it’s a swirling mess of feelings, many of which directly contradict with one another.

 

Eventually the rhythm section drops out and the See Change Treble Choir takes centerstage atop gentle piano chords, moving the track into ethereal territory with beautifully executed chorale vocals. This shift brings to mind that of the 2011 Red Hot Chili Peppers B-side “Open/Close,” which similarly halts abruptly for a choral lift into another musical and spiritual plane.

 

The song’s final section acts somewhat as a convergence of the first two major sections, and coincidentally enough has a similar feel to a very different Red Hot Chili Peppers unit, that which recorded 2002’s By the Way, propelled by the rich melodicism of guitarist John Frusciante, who at the time had been heavily influenced by acts such as The Beach Boys and The Beatles.

 

 

Which each new single released, the anticipation is compounded for the release of The Scarlet Goodbye’s upcoming full-length record, El Camino Adios, which is set to hit shelves on Friday, March 14, 2025. Recently released singles “Speedway,” “To Feel the Sun,” and “Raylene” are currently available on all digital platforms. Stream and/or download new single “Raylene” now.