Beyond The Guess Who: Martha and the Muffins- "This Is The Ice Age"

One of the great Canadian new wave albums of the 1980s

Welcome to Beyond The Guess Who. Each edition I cover a lesser-known Canadian musical artist. This week: Martha and the Muffins

If you enjoyed this post, please hit like, comment, share, or hit the subscribe button. Thank You!

I constantly write about being a teenager from 1998-2004 and being into older music. My main love at the time was new wave music and its various subgenres. At some point, I came across This Is The Ice Age by Martha and the Muffins on cassette, and about a decade ago, I purchased it again on vinyl.

It’s a great Canadian new wave album that often gets overlooked. Martha and the Muffins had a pretty good career, and I plan to cover them more than once. Usually, I focus on a single, but I wanted to write something about this entire album instead because it’s well worth checking out.

*************************************************************************************************************

By 1981, Martha and the Muffins were a well-known band not just in Canada but internationally as well. The band had several lineup changes over the years, which I’ll touch on in future pieces about them. The band has always revolved around husband and wife duo Martha Johnson and Mark Gane.

The year before, they’d scored a major hit with the seminal “Echo Beach”. The single was one of those examples of a track by a Canadian artist that broke out everywhere but in the United States. Like the other example I can think of, “From New York To L.A.” by Patsy Gallant, it was a Top Ten hit in the UK.

The band never scored another UK Top 40 hit, but they did come close a few years later when “Black Stations/White Stations” peaked at #46 on the UK charts and also gave them their lone Hot 100 entry.

*************************************************************************************************************

This Is The Ice Age opens with traffic sounds that lead into the track “Swimming”. The track features lead vocals from the band’s guitarist Mark Gane. In Canada, it was the album’s second single. It’s not a bad track, but it seems like a rather lazy choice given there are so many stronger tracks buried on this album.

Gane also took the photo that served as the album cover.

Second track “Women Around The World At Work” served as the album’s lead single. The track features some solid production from Lanois and some great lyrics by Mark Gane. The song deals with feminist themes and lyrically still holds up today.

It was another Canadian hit for them, and it’s a shame it didn’t give them a second one in the UK as well.

Mark Gane and Martha Johnson also performed the track as recently as 2013 for what appears to be an acoustic session:

“Casualties Of Glass” and the Gage led “Boy Without Filters” are both solid, musically and lyrically. Something about Lanois’ production keeps even the slower tracks from becoming boring.

“Jets Seem Slower In London’s Skies” is a haunting instrumental piece consisting entirely of piano and some echo-y synth effects. Because there are elements of This Is The Ice Age that do not sound dated, pieces like this one are why the album holds up really well nearly 45 years later (and roughly 24 years since I first heard it).

The title track reminds me a lot of Talking Heads, and I think it would be safe to say that their embrace of different sounds and and leaning towards funkier sounds on this album remind me a lot of what Talking Heads were doing around this same time on their Brian Eno-produced Remain In Light album.

Interestingly, producer Daniel Lanlois later collaborated with Brian Eno numerous times on both Eno’s ambient albums and later on with U2.

Lyrically, “One Day In Paris” reminds me a lot of Kate Bush, and I’m really shocked someone didn’t try to pull this as a single instead of “Swimming”.

“One Day In Paris” was covered by Flock Of Dimes, who performed it live in 2016. Their cover does the original justice, and I might have found a (new to me) artist to check out in the future.

“You Sold The Cottage” is the weakest track on this album. It’s actually a fun track, but musically, it’s closer to a B-52’s track than the more art-rock leaning side of new wave that comprises the rest of the album. It’s basically “Echo Beach” meets “Private Idaho”.

There are even elements of this that have Johnson and Gane sing-speaking in a similar manner to Fred Schneider.

Still, the fact that this is the weakest track says a lot about how strong This Is The Ice Age is as an album.

Here’s a later acoustic version with Gane and Johnson performing by a lake. I actually prefer this version to the original.

“Three Hundred Years/Chemistry” is over seven minutes. It combines the bands more art rock leaning with a long first half that changes tempos around four minutes in to a more new wave sounding track with kitschy “Yeah Yeah Yeah” vocals before Johnson takes over.

“I’m No Good At Conversation” and “Twenty Two in Cincinnati” close out the album. The latter track sounds ahead of its time, and I can see why Eno flagged Daniel Lanois down to work with him not long after.

************************************************************************************************************

Here’s a 1981 New Music segment on the band narrated by future Fox News hack JD/John Roberts. Around 2002, Much More Music used to show old repeats of this seminal Canadian-made music program on Saturday nights, and I remember seeing this particular segment. Whoever recorded this must have been the only other person watching. Sadly, they only got up to about early 1982 from the New Music episode archive and because all of this stuff is owned by telecom companies who could care less, I doubt any more episodes will ever see the light of day for even historical purposes. It’s a shame because these would be a great addition to free streaming services for research purposes to music fans.

Martha and the Muffins (or M+M as they would later be known as) continued to record throughout the 1980’s and scored some more Canadian hits. But, that’s a story for another time.

Next Week: TBA