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in: Tallahassee songs, Video, Alpha songs

The House That Dripped Blood

Edit
Game Shows Touch Our Lives
C4ub4

Album

Tallahassee

Released

2002

Artist

the Mountain Goats

Length

2:53

Previous track

"Game Shows Touch Our Lives"

Next Track

"Idylls of the King"

The House that Dripped Blood is the fifth song on the album Tallahassee. It was performed by Hallelujah the Hills in Tallahassee Turns Ten.

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


Comments by John Darnielle About this Song[]

  • "This is a song about love, what you might find it necessary to do to preserve your love. You don't know what. You think, oh, that might involve some sort of personal emotional investment. You don't think about the concrete things you might have to do. Buy vodka. Talk with people who normally wouldn't be in your social circle. Watch a lot of television that you didn't mean to watch and at about eleven every night, say, 'I've been watching this bitch since ten this morning, there ain't nothin' happening.'" -- 2007-03-08 - The Independent - San Francisco, CA
  • (In response to the question "Anybody know what key harmonica is used?") "I'll tell you a "secret" (not like I've been keeping it secret, just that nobody ever asked and I'm generally not an "ok here's how we did that" dude) about this: it's two harmonica parts, possibly three. I played harmonica when I was a freshman in high school - it was the first instrument I picked up after I stopped studying piano, which I'd done for about seven years. So I was still pretty close to my formal training and I got OK at it - I was completely neck-deep in old blues records at the time. So years later when we went to Tarbox, I brought two harmonicas, probably an E harp and one from China that my friend Tom gave me which doesn't have a key inscribed on it, and once we got to overdubs Tony Doogan suggested we put a harmonica part on "THTDB." I probably used the E here, I don't remember but it seems likely because E is the IV in the B scale. Anyhow, I put down a take and it was OK, and Tony usually wants to get several takes since he likes to have the option of comping parts. So I did another take or two. In mix, we were listening to the various parts to see which one was best, and at some point he just brought them all up at once and it was like this big squall of sound coming through the monitors. So that's what you're hearing - two or maybe three different takes layered on top of each other, and since they're not a written part but a "solo" (=I'm improvising), there's some variation and overtones and so forth. (nb this only applies to the part at the end obviously)" -- Mountain-Goats.com Forums

Things Referenced in this Song[]

  • The song's name might refer to the 1970 movie The House that Dripped Blood.
  • ”Wine-dark seas” appears almost 20 times in The Iliad and The Odyssey and refers to the stormy seas of the Mediterranean. Similarly, the song of the Sirens, who lure men to their deaths, is described as “honeyed.”

Live Shows this Song Was Played at[]

Videos of this Song[]



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