Lyrics
Recycle!
It was something like judge and jury or Jeremy Kyle 1
Nobody knew
But still it was elusive
And though they pursued Mr J Archer as he separated everywhere 2
They knew Dot was his mum 3
But still they went on searching and searching
I was provoked
It was not in accord with any known law
Laughing in the middle
Time blenders all of them 4
The last statement with the department of no name 5
Proved diversible to the authorities 6
They knew Judy was his friend 7
Dot was his mum
But they still went on searching and searching with no result
I was provoked
It was not in accord with any known law
Laughing in the middle
Time blenders all of them
At the end they tracked them down to a dancing high school 8
And his goddamn rock school, featuring an Egyptian 9
At least one
And a trombone musician
Then they disappeared, but they went on forever 10
Commentary
“Is This New” (there is no question mark on the record or any of the surviving setlists, see The Fall Online Discography: 2008) is the tenth track on The Fall’s 2008 album, Imperial Wax Solvent. It is credited to M.E. Smith/A. Toma. “A. Toma” is Andi Toma, of Mouse on Mars / Von Südenfed. Imperial Wax Solvent was partly recorded at Mouse On Mars’ St. Martin Tonstudio in Düsseldorf in May-June 2007. The group at the time of recording was Pete Greenway (guitar), Keiron Melling (drums), Eleni Poulou (keyboards, vocals), Dave Spurr (bass), and Mark E. Smith.
Two studio versions of the song have been officially released to date, and one live version: the original Imperial Wax Solvent track; The Britannia Row recording, dated 21 September 2007, which was included on disc 2 of the 3xCD re-release of Imperial Wax Solvent; and the version from the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, 10 May 2008, which was included on disc 3 of the same 3xCD re-release of Imperial Wax Solvent (Cherry Red: CDTRED810, 2020). There are no significant lyrical differences between the two studio versions.
The song was also performed during The Fall’s appearance on the Sky Arts music programme, From The Basement (series 2, episode 2), which is available to watch on YouTube [Link to YouTube. Posted to YouTube by @FromTheBasementOfficial on 5 August 2020.].
“Is This New” was often the first song performed at a gig, and more-or-less an instrumental, since M.E.S. used it for introductory “We are The Fall” statements rather than singing any of the actual lyrics from the record – this is also true of the From The Basement performance. But it does include the deathless lines, “And Timmy the tortoise has had a heart attack” and “Take away the carpet and what are you left with?” The latter is an obvious joke about the From The Basement studio; I have no idea what the deal is with the tortoise.
The first known performance of the song was at the Union Society, Newcastle University, on 5 March 2008. It was played regularly throughout the first half of 2008 (the album was released in April), it’s penultimate airing that year being at the Wickerman Festival in Scotland on 25 July. The next gig wasn’t until 6 September at the West Coast Festival of New Music, Stavanger, Norway, and it was played then. But that was it, so far as I know, until its last known performance at the Cult Festival, Newcastle, on 7 July 2012. It wasn’t played in 2011, despite what some sources say.
There are obvious TV references throughout the lyrics, not that that helps much. There’s hasn’t, let’s be honest, been much success so far in elucidating the lyric’s themes. Caution is always required when trying to pin down what a Fall song might be “about”, which leaves plenty of room for interpretation. This is one of those cases where even attempts to interpret get stuck.
Tommy Mackay says the song “sounds deliberately dated, with its 60s vibe, along with a faux-dramatic, slightly Zappa-esque stop/start routine”. (2018, p.223). I’m not entirely sure if he likes it or not. Steve Pringle does seem to like it: “Crisp and concise… ‘Is This New’ features a slinky riff broken up with urgent, staccato interludes.” (2022, p.445).
Footnotes
- Jeremy Kyle is a British broadcaster and TV presenter most famous, or notorious, for The Jeremy Kyle Show (2005 – 2019). I did wonder if “Judge & Jury” might be a TV show, but I haven’t identified one. ↩︎
- Possibly Jeffrey Archer, the scandal-prone Conservative Party politician and best-selling novelist. ↩︎
- Dot is short for Dorothy. It’s probably not a reference to Dot the Eastenders character, although some people think it is, and it can’t be definitively ruled out. There may be a link to the line later in the song, “They knew Judy was his friend”, after which “Dot was his mum” is repeated. ↩︎
- I don’t know what this phrase means. Is “time blender” a name for something that blends time? Or is it an ungrammatical or just unusual way of saying that time blends… someone or something? Although, what would that mean?
Time Blender (Harper Collins: New York, 1997) is a science fiction novel by Michael Dorn (who played Worf in Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Picard). Although, note that while Dorn’s name is the only one on the cover, two co-authors are listed on the title page – Hilary Hemingway and Jeffry P. Lindsay. I haven’t read the book, but I have read some synopses and there doesn’t appear to be any connection to the lyrics. ↩︎ - “Alton Towers“, also on Imperial Wax Solvent, includes the line, “With the dept of no name” (“dept” pronounced “dept”). ↩︎
- “Diversible” is not in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary or Chambers’ Dictionary, which are my go-tos, but it can nevertheless be found in published writing, probably when the author has tried and failed to find another way of saying “capable of diversification”, or has misspelled “divisible”, or something. Inadequate proof reading will be the death of civilisation, frankly. ↩︎
- “Judy was his friend” could be code for “gay”. “Friend of Dorothy” is probably more commonly encountered, but the phrase “friend of Judy Garland” has the same meaning. It was used in exactly this sense by Kitty Empire, reviewing a Kylie Minogue show in 2007, for example. The origins of the phrase are uncertain, but Garland played Dorothy in the 1939 musical The Wizard of Oz. See Wikipedia: Judy Garland as a gay icon. ↩︎
- High School Dance was a TV series, aired on E4 through January and February 2007 (therefore just before the recording of some of Imperial Wax Solvent). It was a ‘reality’-type show, narrated by Colin Murray, in which sixth form students were given a budget of £5000 and tasked with organising a ball/dance event (inspired by American-style proms). A different school or college featured in each of the six episodes. I’ve tracked down the following information from contemporary newspaper TV listings: Episode 1, 31 January – Heysham School, Morecambe/1950s theme; Episode 2, 7 February – Plymouth College/Moulin Rouge! theme; Episode 3, 14 February – Sittingbourne Community College, Kent/Bugsy Malone theme; Episode 4, 21 February – unknown; Episode 5, 28 February – Harlington Community School, London/Hollywood theme; Episode 6, 7 March – unknown. The missing episodes featured schools in Cardiff and Manchester, but I don’t know which was which. The series was repeated on Channel 4. Whether this programme was M.E.S.’ reference point I don’t know, but it could have been. ↩︎
- “Rock School” might be a reference to the ‘reality’ TV series, Rock School, with Gene Simmons (Channel 4, 2005 – 2006). ↩︎
- The old doomy Annotated Fall had “… went off forever”. But I’m hearing “… went on forever.” I think that also makes better sense in context, not that that is always the clincher! ↩︎
Sources / Links
- The Annotated Fall: “Is This New” [Archived]
- Empire, Kitty (2007). “The KO Queen: Kylie, Wembley Arena”. The Observer, 7 January. [Available online]
- Mackay, Tommy (2018). 40 Odd Years of The Fall. Place of publication unknown: Greg Moodie.
- Pringle, Steve (2022). You Must Get Them All: The Fall on Record. [paperback edition]. Pontefract: Route Publishing Ltd. [Online store]
- The Track Record: “Is This New”
Initial song statement ‘Recycle.!’
Yep, thanks for that!