Perpetual Motion Machine

To me this is one of Modest Mouse's most easily interpreted songs.

Perpetual Motion is movement that continues forever, which is physically impossible. A perpetual motion machine is something many people have tried to theorize or create, but never successfully.

This song is saying everyone wants to live forever. Infinite life, like perpetual motion, is long desired and quite impossible.

Living a Life until you die = Reading a paragraph until words run out = Running a race until time runs out

Similarities Modest mouse/ Pixies

Pixies:

With your feet in the air and your head on the ground Try this trick and spin it, yeah Your head will collapse When there's nothing in it And you'll ask yourself (...) Except the little fish But they told me, he swears Trying to talk to me, to me, to me

Modest mouse:

With your teeth to your lips And your hair to the ground Well, you hear the fish and they're making this sound Saying, "We just want to go on walking around And feel what it's like to fall down"

Anyone hear the gibberish in the background after "I Saw"? I love that part. That's old school mouse, and it's really trippy.

This song is meant to be played on a loop.

"Daniel read the paragraph He read until the words ran out It said we're all in trouble now

Poison in the juice carafe We drank until our thirst ran out Oh no, we're in some trouble now"

= Poison is alcohol, they're gonna have some fun

With your teeth to your lips And your hair to the ground Well, you hear the fish and they're making this sound Saying, "We just want to go on walking around And feel what it's like to fall down"

= Fish are people that enjoy alcohol. Falling down isn't a bad thing, just a different lifestyle. Watch Factotum by Bukowski.

Patrick ran the race Yeah, he ran until the tire ran out Oh no, I'm in some trouble now

Tried to kick it over I tried until the juice ran out Oh no, we want more trouble now

= Having fun with alcohol, hence juice.

Heard this last night... have to say I'm pretty excited for aug.4th... I like it. reminds me of Steam engenius a little. But did anyone else notice the whole "blame yourself" "With your teeth to your lips And your hair to the ground Well, you hear the fish and they're making this sound Saying, "We just want to go on walking around And feel what it's like to fall down" ?

Blame yourself has to be one of my favorite songs of all time it was pretty cool to hear that line in a recorded song.

It would be amazing if they would release a professionally recorded version of blame yourself... but one can only dream.

Anyways I think the song is about just going on with life and experiencing things before you die.

I love the fish part, how they want to feel what it's like to fall down. I kind of long ago gave up on any complete understanding of any modest mouse song, but I think I actually have a good grasp on what this ones about. I think it's kind of like Dashboard, about global warming and the end of the world or whatever, and how people end up wasting their time until they're running out of it. I think the fish part is a morbid curiosity about the end of the world and how we want to "feel what it's like to fall down."

I have to say guys, I listened to No One's First last night and I'm liking it. I don't know why, but it seems a lot better than We Were Dead somehow. August 4th <333

I, too, appreciate the surfacing of one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite songs appear on this song. It's nice to see it on a legitimate release. This EP is so good.

Hey, "Perpetual Motion Machine" has the lyric: "With your teeth to your lips and your head to the ground/You hear the fish and they're making this sound/Saying, "We just wanna go and walk around and feel what it's like to fall down." which he has incorporated into songs during shows (namely, Trailer Trash & Blame Yourself) some time ago. He must have felt the need to incorporate said lyric into a studio recorded tune as he thinks they're quite good and I have to say, along with "You'll See" (a piece that a live version of Trucker's Atlas transitions into) the aforementioned lyrics is probably my favorite MM lyric that has not appeared on an actual studio recorded version of a song (until now of course...)

I went to a modest mouse concert a few years ago and they mixed this in at the end of ocean breaths salty which sounded a little bit better but still a great song

I like the resurfacing of lyrics, this was originally an Ugly Casanova song 'Here Comes Trouble'.