Knots

The words are built from R. D. Laing's 1970 poetry book Knots, whose verses tie people in circles of mutual hurt, guilt and the wish to be wanted. The band's sleeve note calls Laing an eminent psychologist whose logical, poetic riddles stirred them into writing a latter-day madrigal, and describes the result as something of a musical jigsaw. Several voices take the lead in turn, starting with Phil Shulman, then Minnear and Derek.

uDiscover describes a largely a cappella piece sung in the round, and Strawberry Bricks called it a madrigal gone sideways. Ryan Reed heard overlapping, madrigal-tinged harmonies, discordant glockenspiel and jaunty piano breaks, and Classic Rock has called it a more intellectually coherent forerunner of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. In 2021 the band released a 1970s Denver college radio interview in which Ray and Derek discuss the song, as part of its Missing Interviews series.

Live

setlist.fm logs 29 performances on its own, and it also sat inside many of the Excerpts from Octopus medleys. It was recorded for the BBC on 4 December 1973 and is part of the Octopus medley on Playing the Fool. In 1980 the band reworked it: the Hempstead broadcast of May that year pairs it with Playing the Game, in what the tape notes call a startlingly different version. In Miami that June, Derek introduced it as a psychedelic song. The upload in the hypersongs web is the band's official audio of the album recording.