Red Hands

 
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Introduction

Does this song seriously need an introduction…? Okay, fine.

The characters have fallen into a rhythm the last few months, and Hunter still somehow doesn’t know that his girlfriend sleeps with other people for a living. Like he’s literally driving her directly to their house. He is being paid to bring her to their door for house calls. These homes must have some really good insulation, you’d think he’d be able to hear something. Anyways.

For some background on Red Hands, this song, along with a few others from Act II was featured on the early demos from before The Dear Hunter existed. The Dear Ms. Leading demos were created by Casey while he was still in his earlier band, The Receiving End of Sirens. When the label Triple Crown Records heard the demo, they gave Casey the option to pursue this as a side project. Later down the road, Casey decided to take up the offer and decided to start the story from a beginning, and The Dear Hunter became his main project. Act I was created to give preface to the story from the Dear Ms. Leading demos, and the demos themselves evolved into what we now know as Act II. Red Hands, being one of the first songs that a lot of early fans heard, became a crowd favorite. Since then, Red Hands has haunted the band and remains stuck in Casey’s head to this day.


Into The Lyrics

Lyrics

Even if you never strayed from me
I’d question your fidelity
There’d always be a shroud of suspicion
And my hearts a liability

With your hands marooned so freshly red
You’d wrap your lips around my neck
Try and forced to love the thought of me
Simple motions make me ill

Was it bitter when you tossed and turned
On his undercover mattress?
Did it feel so good?
Hope it felt so good
Don’t know what I’d do if you lost sleep over little old me
He’s so much better
They’re all much better
Take off your sweater, your shoes, and your shirt
And get to work

Maybe this is just a work of art
Scripted players in a play of lust
Hope the end is well worth waiting for
Everything you wished it’d be

Was it bitter when you tossed and turned
On his undercover mattress?
Did it feel so good?
Hope it felt so good
Don’t know what I’d do if you lost sleep over little old me
He’s so much better
They’re all much better
Take off your sweater, your shoes, and your shirt
And get to work

Oh my god what have I done
Now my darling put your clothes back on

Because you can’t be caught red handed
If you’re not red handed
But darling I would never say those words to you
I was pulling out my heart so I could pin it to my sleeve
On display for you to see I’m on display

Oh my god what have I done
Now my darling put your clothes back on

Analysis

One day while on a house call, Ms. Leading forgets her scarlet scarf with Hunter on the carriage. If you remember from Blood of the Rose, she would always take this scarf with her, and then after she returned she would give it to Hunter and he would tie it around the sidebar of the carriage. Not much of a significance really, but it was routine and Hunter didn’t know if it had importance. In the Gloria music video, we can see that Ms. Leading would use this scarf to tie around the doorknob, as a ‘sock on the doorknob’ thing while she was with her client.

Hunter notices the scarf has been left behind, so takes it and goes to give it to her. Without knocking, he enters the room and is faced with the inevitable. Naked and upright, Ms. Leading’s jaw dropped and her hands began to shake. There was a portly man underneath her with a handlebar mustache and hair not as slick as his oily skin.

As Hunter sees this, he feels his life come crashing down around him. Both him and Ms. Leading fell to the ground and began to cry, both of them crushed by this event. The man began to yell, upset for obvious reasons.

Everything suddenly started connecting for Hunter. His relationship is not what he thought it was, or at least he did not know the full situation. He also made the connection between Ms. Leading and his mother, Ms. Terri. The carriage that would bring her home after she left the Lake to the City, served the same purpose as the carriage he drove daily. His entire world view shifted, as he learned the two most important people in his life had kept this truth from him.

The portly man, upset that his sex call was interrupted by a stranger barging into his home and proceeding to have everyone cry, shoved Hunter out of his room, and our naive protagonist fell down the stairs to the ground floor.

Okay now to actually get to the lyrics. After this haunting revelation, Hunter begins to think to himself. In heartbreak, he sulks in his perspective and begins to grow spiteful. He tells himself he’d never have truly trusted her anyways, which honestly I find hard to believe because he seemed pretty oblivious for the last year. ‘With your hands marooned, so freshly red’- Hunter caught her in the act, and believes her to be a liar. To be fair to him, she is. From Hunter’s perspective, he now believes that she never loved him, and that this was an act, that she was using him. To be fair to her, that’s not true.

Hunter’s thoughts lash out. He thinks her a menace, and begins to play the victim all too well. ‘Don’t know what I’d do if you lost sleep over little old me / He’s so much better / They’re all much better’. As happens with some breakups, Hunter begins to wonder why he wasn’t good enough. She was sleeping with other men, and he takes that as a hit to his ego. The final refrain is Hunter thinking about the emotional vulnerability he made himself susceptible to. He walked right into this, with no guards up to protect his heart.

While we do not see Ms. Leading’s perspective in the CD booklet or the lyrics, I’m going to try and give some insight. She was a sex worker, and did so to make money and live comfortably after hardship earlier in life. Along comes a boy, and they spend time together with mutual enjoyment. After some hesitation, she allowed herself to open up to him. But, knowing his naivety, she did not want to let him know of her job. She didn’t think he was emotionally capable of understanding it. But, her boss offered him a job working with her, which made things incredibly difficult. Eventually he finds out, and now everyone is crying.

Was she in the wrong? Yes, but not to the extent that Hunter is making it. She was wrong to lie, but this was also her profession and she had been doing it for longer than she knew him. In fact it’s sort of how they met. She did have feelings for him, and Hunter wasn’t the only one to put his heart out into the world.


Into The Music

The music starts with some keys and drums alternating between C and Em. The piano and vocals come in after a while, and we get a fairly simple progression in C. This song is fairly simple as far as melody and timing, so I won’t go deep into the theory. There’s a small point where the guitars come in where the backing vocals sing a melody that’s awfully familiar, but it may be nothing. We’ll see when I get to Act IV.

When the final refrain is sung for the first time, we get a melody on the strings that calls back to The Death and the Berth. This melody plays in the background for most of the rest of the song on various instruments. Although this melody appeared at more than one point in the Acts, is was likely just foreshadowing since it isn’t repeated after this song.


Closing Thoughts

As mentioned before, this song is a fan favorite and definitely plays a role in many of our lives as an anthem for it’s time era. The song is a pivotal point in the story and sets a lot of things in motion for the rest of the Acts. There’s also probably something to be said about the title and it’s relation to another character we’ve seen with red hands, but I think I’ll let that one wait too.

There’s more to come, and each song in this saga will eventually get it’s entry. If you want to stay updated, there’s a section in the footer to subscribe through email and get updates every time I upload an entry, and also a section to donate if you want to support the site. Thank you for reading!