This is a strange one. I never did work out how this nasty little song fits into The Boatman's Call. The speaker seems to have not only killed his partner but battered her - her mouth is "dark red & big with blood". The key verse, I think, is the third, where we find weasel words of self-justification: I don't think you could say anything worse to the person you murdered than "you probably deserved it anyway" (apart from "it takes two to tango"!). At the end, he seems to imply that both of them got their just desserts. None of which explains why this works as an affecting love song! The genius of Nick Cave, I suppose.
This is a strange one. I never did work out how this nasty little song fits into The Boatman's Call. The speaker seems to have not only killed his partner but battered her - her mouth is "dark red & big with blood". The key verse, I think, is the third, where we find weasel words of self-justification: I don't think you could say anything worse to the person you murdered than "you probably deserved it anyway" (apart from "it takes two to tango"!). At the end, he seems to imply that both of them got their just desserts. None of which explains why this works as an affecting love song! The genius of Nick Cave, I suppose.