The House Wins

if anyone can help with the few parts i couldn't get quite right, it would be appreciated :)

Sure:

Fingers blistered from the nightly scratching at the window which won't open far enough to let air in. The house wins. Oh the house always wins. Feral cats are screaming at the clouds beneath the window with the crask so small that nothing gets within. The house wins. Oh the house always wins. You don't have to be alone to be lonely, You might as well give in. Telephones are howling at the cats out in the alley and the window offers nothing in the din. The house wins. Oh the house always wins. Clouds uncage the car alarms to chase the cats and telephones. Fingers rake and rasp away themr skin. The house wins. Oh the house always wins. You don't have to be alone to be lonely, You might as well give in. Yeah you don't have to be alone to be lonely, You might as well give in. Ice age upon catastrophic ice age of selection and only one result has trickled in... The house wins. Oh the house always wins. If evil were a lesser breed then justice after all these years the righteous would have freed the world of sin. The house wins. Oh the house always wins. You don't hav to be alone to be lonely You might as well give in. You don't have to be sick to be dying You might as well give in. You don't have to have lost to be lost. Oh give in. You don't have to be alone to be lonenly You might as well give in.

Oh, and I have NO idea what this song is about, I'll admit it. But, it's amazing.

I'm thinking it's about a guy who feels trapped inside his house, and those are all the things he hears and sees out his window. Maybe he's shy or something.

I think this is my favorite song by them. Sadly, I have absolutely NO clue what it means.

i agree with behle but i'll elaborate a little.. i think its more, he feels trapped inside but hes saying he gave in, he's not able to conquor the outside. he's just very anti-social:

"You don't have to be alone to be lonenly You might as well give in."

he's saying, oh well, i can't win.. he sounds almost content with his inabilities and with being held hostage inside his own house

"If evil were a lesser breed then justice after all these years the righteous would have freed the world of sin."

if there wasn't so much bad keeping him in, then he would be able to overcome it and be free, but he cant cuz he has nothing helping him.

it sounds like he's just weak and scared, thats what i get. or as behle said, shy.. but i think its more than just that

sorry it took me awhile to get back to this, but thank you very much Misseverus for helping me out with the spots i missed

this is a very nice song to end the album with.

It's an interesting and unusual kind of song with which to conclude an album. A tune about hopelessness and despair rather than a more thematically upbeat or whistful number, as is more often the case.

The message is pretty simple: No matter what you do, or how well you've succeeded so far, you're still going to fail in the end, so "you might as well give in." The verses, themselves, seem to suggest someone up late at night, frustrated and depressed, interpreting everything he perceives (trees branches - "fingers" - scratching at the window, screaming cats, and neighbours' telephones) in negative, futile tones.

One bit of text that people have missed so far is the title of the song: "The House Wins" It's a clear gambling/casino reference, most recognizably present in Blackjack, suggesting that if you gamble in the "game of life", your losses will always outweigh your wins.

I don't particularly like this song, it's a bit too depressing for my tastes. It's also very confusing. The only things I really lke about this song are the lines "You don't have to be alone to be lonely," "You don't have to be sick to be dying," and "You don't have to have lost to be lost." I just thought they were clever ways of describing loneliness. Thats really what this song is about at its core: loneliness. There's not much else to it.

I agree with Elected Potatoe. The song certainly captures the idea of losses outweighing wins in general. My only addition to that point would be in taking a look at quotes such as, "You don't have to have lost to be lost.", which suggests that external losses don't necessarily determine your state of individual or introspective success. It would exhort that each person experiencing an outside defeat would give in to that failure, but feel strengthened from within.