Martha and the Muffins, This Is The Ice Age (Dindisc/Virgin) 81
When the reissue of Martha & The Muffins’ first album, Metro Music was announced, I only had the vaguest recollections of them as some sort of new wave one hit wonder on the order of Berlin or Yaz. Listening to the album set me straight. “Echo Beach” was a minor hit for the band, but the album was full of witty, powerful songs. For most bands of the era, it would have been downhill from there. But Martha & The Muffins were still holding back. After a modest-to-a-fault second album (Trance & Dance), the band earned the tag as the Canadian Talking Heads with This Is The Ice Age. Their secret weapon was a young Daniel Lanois, who would play the Brian Eno role for a trilogy of albums. It’s like the band went from black and white to Technicolor. Lanois incorporated incidental sounds and digital synthesizers filtered through delays and reverbs that made it sound less synthetic than their peers. The drum sounds themselves are impressively ahead of their time, like they used giant rubber mallets. It sounds like Tricky may have sampled them on Maxinquaye 14 years later. Embedded toward the end of the title track, you’ll hear a snippet of a scrambled, processed vocal that sounds suspiciously like the intro to Radiohead’s Kid A.
The songwriting is as equally stunning as the band’s vivid new sound. After an abrasive opening sound of what sounds like a traffic jam, “Swimming” slides in, smooth and oily, a sinewy bass track undulates around Mark Gane’s buttery baritone, and that incredible drum sound. From its sound, bittersweet lyrics and unconventional song structure, it’s one of the most singularly original songs of the 80s. Showcasing Martha Johnson’s vocals, “Women Around the World At Work” is a stunning single, with a metronomic rhythm that anticipates Stereolab, a searing guitar solo that echoes the dry, brittle tone of Television’s Tom Verlaine, and Andy Haas’ melancholy saxophone solo that’s too atonal to have that cliché’d 80s sound. If anything, it recalls a more introverted, melancholy mix of Roxy Music and Steely Dan. The simple, piano driven “One Day In Paris” is one of Martha’s finest showcases, in which Lanois hangs back with the most subtle of touches to let the song breathe. “You Sold The Cottage” is a grown-up followup to the lyrical theme of “Echo Beach.” The album concludes with the stunningly beautiful two-part “Three Hundred Years/Chemistry.” The first section is an instrumental synth and farfisa piece that rivals anything on Eno’s Another Green World or Bowie’s Low. It then gradually bleeds into a short, transcendent vocal number that ties the album up perfectly. It’s over far too quickly, which is why the two bonus tracks are more than welcome. On other albums they might be standouts, but here they’re just nice extras after a flawless album. Now if they would please reissue the next two albums, Danseparc (1982) and Mystery Walk (1984).
