When Love Cuts The Strings
Lyrics
First thing that happened was the river overflowed
The water running through the streets was sweet and cold
I knelt by the water like a doe by a stream
Punch-drunk, snowblind, as though the whole thing were a bad dream
And then love called out the heavy artillery
And Kypris took the horses by the bit for the morning ride
I count my blessings but you can only be expected to count so high
When love cuts the strings
I smeared myself with pennyroyal to keep the hounds at bay
And you poked your head out of an alley half a block away
And I recognized you though I'm not sure how
And the air turned red around you
As a dull chill came down over me
And then love summoned up the infantry
And the green-eyed goddess got ready for all-out war
I count my blessings
But I don't even know what the word blessing means
When love cuts the strings
Yeah!
Banter
- This song is old as dirt. (2015-05-29 KEXP)
- In an interesting or not interesting bit of technique trivia, that's the first time that song [Love Cuts the Strings] has successfully been played with a pick, because I didn't used to ever play with a pick, and I harshly judged those who did. Then you tour a lot, and you start beating the living God out of your hand, and you say, oh, there's 10 more nights of these, maybe the guys with a pick have a point. And so. But these old songs, usually they're like this [strums aggressively without a pick] and that's hard to do when you're holding onto something with your two fingers. Thus ends this extraordinarily fascinating disposition on technique. (2015-05-29 KEXP)
- I thought also on a holiday like this we think about where we come from and where we ended up and about our families and our chosen families and about the wide-ranging nature of love. And here's a song I wrote very early on in the days of the Mountain Goats. It's called 'Love Cuts the Strings'. (2020-05-10)
Live Performances
Footnotes