Random Song Selection - Teach Me, Sweetheart: The Fiery Furnaces

This song has been haunting me for months - hell, for years it has been intermittently on my music radar (I even found mention of it over at George's place from September 2006!)

The Fiery Furnaces: Teach me, sweetheart (from the album Bitter Tea)

Then I rediscovered the track last year, alerted the lovely Chrissie to it, and promptly found it was lodged in my brain on a recurring loop.

The song has strange properties: it sounds like a fairy-tale (hmm, where have I heard that sentiment over the last few days?!) dominated throughout by visions of the in-laws as more than human. There are loops of sound, electronically twisted, garbled, but their distortion is magical rather than terrifying (or, rather, it is scary but in the way that travelling with the Doctor is scary).

The rhythm of the song changes dramatically several times, moving from jarring to melodic and back again, swirling sounds that you cannot quite musically pinpoint to an instrument.

Anyway, the track's back bugging me again and I know what that means.

Come away
Teach me, sweetheart
Come on past
Brave young batchelors
I'm alone
Teach me, sweetheart

My mother in law was standing by the stove
Hissing like a snake, hissing like a snake
Hissing like a snake
She gave orders to spill my blood
She gave orders
To spill my blood, i thought

I thought, i thought, and i thought some more

Come away
Teach me sweetheart
Come on past
Brave young bachelors
I'm alone
Teach me, sweetheart

My father in law was lying on his bed
Growling like a dog, growling like a dog
Growling like a dog
He gave orders to spill my blood; he gave orders
To spill my blood, i thought

I thought, i thought, and i thought some more

Come away
Teach me sweetheart
Come on past
Brave young bachelors
I'm alone
Teach me, sweetheart

My sister in law was sitting on her stoop
Crawing like a crow, crawing like a crow
Crawing like a crow
She gave orders to spill my blood
She gave orders
To spill my blood, i thought

and i thought some more

My brother in law is leaning on the love-seat
Tapping with his tail, tapping with his tail
Purring like a cat
He gave orders to spill my blood
He gave orders
To spill my blood, i thought