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The House That Dripped Blood Lyrics
Look beyond the broken bottles
Past the rotting wooden stairs
Root out the wine-dark honeyed center
Not everyone can live like millionaires
Look through the air-thin walls
Tear up the floorboards strip the paint
Go over every inch of space
With the patience of a saint
Grab your hat get your coat
The cellar door is an open throat
Look past the kitchen cabinets
Go through the chest of drawers
Scrutinize the casements
Rip the varnish off the doors
Dig up the laughing photographs
They're here somewhere or other
Take what you can carry
But let me tell you brother
Still waters go stagnant
Bodies bloat
And the cellar door is an open throat
Past the rotting wooden stairs
Root out the wine-dark honeyed center
Not everyone can live like millionaires
Tear up the floorboards strip the paint
Go over every inch of space
With the patience of a saint
Grab your hat get your coat
The cellar door is an open throat
Go through the chest of drawers
Scrutinize the casements
Rip the varnish off the doors
Dig up the laughing photographs
They're here somewhere or other
Take what you can carry
But let me tell you brother
Still waters go stagnant
Bodies bloat
And the cellar door is an open throat
Song Info
Submitted by
weezerific:cutlery On Oct 11, 2004
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i currently live in a house in topeka kansas called the casa de cobra. this song is very near to my heart. as we almost always have at least 30 empty pabst ect cans everywhere. cig butts everywhere, spills like you couldn't imagine of every known bodily and unbodily substanse, spray paint and sharpies on the wall and there is no water. i've paced around our house to this song so manytimes. i love how life can feel like a movie and how songs other people whom you've never met before and probably won't can write words that you identafye with so well.
When I first hear this one I thought that it might be about an impending natural disaster of some sort, like a tornado or a hurricane. I think the Alpha couple examining their home, looking for things to save, but there isn't much. Clearly in this album, the state of the house indicates the state of the relationship. This song especially examines how flimsy and broken the house is. Also, I think this lyric "Root out the wine-dark honeyed center" is possibly alluding to the fact that the core of the house is violent.
"Not everyone can live like millionaires"- Despite all evidence to the contrary, the narrator is reassuring themselves that it’s not perfect, but not so bad (both the house and their marriage). They’re tearing their house apart looking for something worth saving from the oncoming storm. Looking fruitlessly for cheerful photographs that don’t exist. The narrator is trying to convince themselves that "They're here somewhere or other"
The couple is swallowed up by the cellar during the storm and the storm still kills and destroys- "Still waters go stagnant/Bodies bloat"
the house, it seems is a manifestation of the couples relationship, its alive but its bleeding
I was listening to a boot from 2007 and they sang the last verse as
Dig out the wedding album Look for pictures of your friends Flip through it page by page The means is going to justify the end
...I don't know if he just pulled that out of the air but it stopped me dead in my tracks. Damn.
The other night, I had a revelation as to this song: Does anyone else see it as the chronologically last song on the album? With all the talk of "bloated bodies", "open throat(s)", and the implication of renovating the house after the Alphas are gone ("rip the varnish", "pull up the floorboards"), it sounds like detectives are looking at the house after the Alphas are gone, once the male Alpha has killed his wife in a murder-suicide. Thoughts?
chronologically the last song is Alpha Omega
chronologically the last song is Alpha Omega
if you look at alot of The Mountain Goats songs you'll see that houses are an extended metaphor for relationship in Darnielle's lyrics, (see: The Mess Inside, and Baboon, also somewhat Alpha Rat's nest)
if you look at alot of The Mountain Goats songs you'll see that houses are an extended metaphor for relationship in Darnielle's lyrics, (see: The Mess Inside, and Baboon, also somewhat Alpha Rat's nest)
this song is about a dying relationship, he's ripping through the house for photographs of a time when they were happy "the laughing photographs"
this song is about a dying relationship, he's ripping through the house for photographs of a time when they were happy "the laughing photographs"
It sounds like the house is a metaphor for somebody's body going through an autopsy. "Go over every inch of space With the patience of a saint"
Maybe someone close to the singer was murdered (maybe a drug overdose? Maybe they were a heavy drinker? "look beyond the broken bottles" "Not everyone can live like millionaires").
That's what I've always thought of when listening to this haunting song.
It sounds like the house is a metaphor for somebody's body going through an autopsy. "Go over every inch of space With the patience of a saint"
Maybe someone close to the singer was murdered (maybe a drug overdose? Maybe they were a heavy drinker? "look beyond the broken bottles" "Not everyone can live like millionaires").
That's what I've always thought of when listening to this haunting song.