- Swimming
- Women Around The World At Work
- Casualties Of Glass
- Boy Without Filters
- Jets Seem Slower In London Skies
- This Is The Ice Age
- One Day In Paris
- You Sold The Cottage
- Three Hundred Years / Chemistry
Cold Modern Dreams
Released in 1981, This Is the Ice Age marked a turning point for Martha and the Muffins, pushing the Canadian band beyond their earlier new wave success into far more experimental and atmospheric territory. Produced by Daniel Lanois, who would later shape the sound of U2 and Peter Gabriel, the album introduced a spacious, cinematic quality that transformed the group’s identity. It was less about radio-ready hooks and more about creating a mood - icy, introspective, and strangely alluring.
What gives the record its lasting power is the way it balances detachment with emotion. The production opens up vast sonic spaces, allowing guitars, keyboards, and voices to echo like signals across frozen landscapes. Instead of cluttering the sound, the arrangements breathe, inviting the listener to inhabit their stillness. Yet within that cool exterior beats a human core: Martha Johnson and Mark Gane’s voices, at once understated and evocative, lend a vulnerability to the album’s detached surfaces.
Thematically, This Is the Ice Age resonates as a portrait of alienation in a rapidly changing world. Its title becomes metaphorical, suggesting a culture grown cold, connections fraying, and individuals seeking warmth amid technological and social upheaval. The music doesn’t rage against this reality so much as it observes and reflects it, offering snapshots of urban life tinged with melancholy and distance.
The album also reveals the early outlines of Lanois’s atmospheric production style. Layers of texture create depth without excess, making the songs feel both intimate and expansive. This approach gives the record a timelessness, distinguishing it from many of its era’s new wave peers who leaned too heavily on trend-driven sounds.
Looking back, This Is the Ice Age stands as the band’s boldest artistic statement - a reinvention that traded immediacy for depth, and in doing so, carved out a unique place in the post-punk landscape. It’s a record that rewards immersion, offering an experience as much as a collection of songs.
What gives the record its lasting power is the way it balances detachment with emotion. The production opens up vast sonic spaces, allowing guitars, keyboards, and voices to echo like signals across frozen landscapes. Instead of cluttering the sound, the arrangements breathe, inviting the listener to inhabit their stillness. Yet within that cool exterior beats a human core: Martha Johnson and Mark Gane’s voices, at once understated and evocative, lend a vulnerability to the album’s detached surfaces.
Thematically, This Is the Ice Age resonates as a portrait of alienation in a rapidly changing world. Its title becomes metaphorical, suggesting a culture grown cold, connections fraying, and individuals seeking warmth amid technological and social upheaval. The music doesn’t rage against this reality so much as it observes and reflects it, offering snapshots of urban life tinged with melancholy and distance.
The album also reveals the early outlines of Lanois’s atmospheric production style. Layers of texture create depth without excess, making the songs feel both intimate and expansive. This approach gives the record a timelessness, distinguishing it from many of its era’s new wave peers who leaned too heavily on trend-driven sounds.
Looking back, This Is the Ice Age stands as the band’s boldest artistic statement - a reinvention that traded immediacy for depth, and in doing so, carved out a unique place in the post-punk landscape. It’s a record that rewards immersion, offering an experience as much as a collection of songs.
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My personal view:
For me this album is one of the relatively unknown gems of the eighties. Before this album, the band had mainly recorded pop songs, including the excellent Echo Beach, but here they inject a lot of progressive experimentalism into the mix - without forgetting their basic strength in melodies. There is really not a single track on the album that is not awesome, while the soft ballad One Day In Paris, and the unusual Boy Without Filters are the highlights for me.