Penny

When the songs takes off and gets loud, that says a lot about the lyrics and the song itself - He says he is a machine - in the industrial revoulution machines replaced man power, the ability to do more than one thing at once, multi-tasking, but yet this is a machine that can not do that. Is he overwhelmed to the point he can only focus on one task at a time? I am not sure from there

I like to think of this song as him personfiying the penny as the average, small, voiceless american citizen, and he is mocking the US for not listening to its citizens.

Maybe..its late and im tired so that might have come out wrong LoL...

I'm pretty sure it's about someone working in a job where he just performs one function all day, like in a factory. And feels treated as a machine rather than a person. Just my take though

I can also see the Industrial Revolution connection with the song sung from the point of view of a man whose job is being taken by a machine.

The band are Welsh though I believe so I doubt highly they're making fun of the US in particular in any way

I picture a machine arm hanging to the side of a factory line, wanting to get back to work when the factory is closed when it says "It's a hell of a time to be stranded off the line."

I never considered trying to think about what this song is about, but the Electric fence could easily be interpreted to mean that he's stuck in the factory for his entire life. Or it could be just as easily be a random conversation between 2 workers. Who knows?

What I do know is that this is a wonderful song and few bands could top it.

Well since the song's name is Penny then I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the penny is the machine, and pennies also happen to be a different color than the rest of the currency. It also happens to be worth the least. The real question is what are the two tasks it takes on -- this machine which was created (taken off the line) to perform one task at a time?

I see the two tasks as currency and control. On the one hand money is economic and on the other hand it is political. Since it is a machine and only meant to perform one task, its job is impossible and failure is inevitable.