Bottle of Blues

Bottle of Blues is the eighth track on Mutations.

Description
Like most songs on Mutations, Bottle of Blues is an old song that Beck dug up. For the album, Beck and his band put together a fairly straightforward arrangement.

The song seems to be about impotence, sexual or otherwise. Like most blues lyrics, it's open to different interpretations and emotions. Many of the lines have a sexual nature ("I get higher and lower like a tired soldier with nothing to shoot"). Even one of the lines in the song has impotence in it ("Holding hands with an impotent dream"). That line alone clarifies a lot of the other lines in the song, from "a tired soldier with nothing to shoot" and "a brothel of fake energy" to even the title. A line Beck borrowed from Woody Guthrie takes on a new meaning here ("ain't it hard, ain't it hard"). Some of the other feelings and lines in the song ("I've been waiting for a year, or a day" or "I'm over the rails and out of the race") are results of the impotence.

Definitely a strange song, like most of his blues songs. In addition to the other lines, Beck uses "Tell my Mama I'm a hundred years late / I'm over the rails and out of the race" and "on a backwards river" to explain how he's feeling.

Lyrics
I just found me a bottle of blues

Some strange comfort for a soul to soothe

Ain't it hard, ain't it hard to want somebody

Who doesn't want you?

And I've been waiting for a year or a day

Some strange weather must be blowing my way

'Cause I got no mind to go or to stay

Or be left behind

Holding hands with an impotent dream

In a brothel of fake energy

Put a nickel in a graveyard machine

I get higher and lower

I get higher and lower

Like a tired soldier with nothing to shoot

And nowhere to lose this bottle of blues

Eagles drone and pose alone

Like black balloons all banged and blown

On a backwards river

The infidels shiver in the stench of belief

And tell my momma I'm a hundred years late

I'm over the rails and out of the race

The crippled psalms of an age that won't thaw

Are ringing in my ears

Holding hands with an impotent dream

In a brothel of fake energy

Put a nickel in a graveyard machine

I get higher and lower

I get higher and lower

Like a tired soldier with nothing to shoot

And nowhere to lose this bottle of blues

There's nothing that I won't playUh huh, yea what?

Well I just found me a bottle of blues

Some strange comfort for a soul to soothe

Ain't it hard, ain't it hard to want somebody

Who doesn't want you?

Holding hands with an impotent dream

In a brothel of fake energy

Put a nickel in a graveyard machine

I get higher and lower

I get higher and lower

Like a tired solder with nothing to shoot

And nowhere to lose this bottle of blues

Bottle of blues

All my folks in the back row