The Top 35 Or So Songs of the 80’s
#29: Martha and the Muffins - Three Hundred Years/Chemistry
Warning: This is an album-closing seven-minute slow-burner with a 3.5-minute ambient introduction.
Realistically, I could lop off the first half of this track and just give you the really, really good part, but I have too much invested in This Is The Ice Age to commit such a travesty. The point of reference I always make for the album is that it’s an human-ecology companion to the Talking Heads’ Remain In Light (which is the greatest album of all time btw). For instance, where the Heads end in bleakness and information-“Overload”, Martha and the Muffins close with a fucking Creation Story.
Honestly, I connect so much with This Is The Ice Age that I could feasibly write a 33⅓ book for the album. Broadly speaking, it’s about the death of escapism, about feeling lost in a very large unfamiliar place and having to try your damnedest to make contact with other people. “My thoughts are as foreign as these sights that surround me.” It’s about human and neural networks, channels of communication and sensation. “Now and then we connect. Don’t lose hope.”
I can’t really recommend the album, however. It’s taken me four years and one fateful hangover to reach this level of idiopathic enthusiasm and emotional investment. I wouldn’t be surprised if a couple readers write the album off as good-not-great boilerplate new wave. (They’d be wrong of course, but that’s beside the point.)
“Three Hundred Years/Chemistry” is simply an excellent album-closer. “Three Hundred Year” works as a kind of primordial ambiance. It slowly gathers form until we reach a climax of ominous keyboard jabs, and then pause briefly. “Chemistry” opens like daybreak with clean, bright keyboard sounds. The rhythm section locks into a nice groove. And then we get the big hooks: A giant fucking guitar—it’s possible that Daniel Lanois’s greatest contribution to humanity is getting that sound on record—a chorus of yeah yeah yeahs and Martha Johnson at her very finest.
“It all begins with chemistry,” she teases. Chemistry? What begins? The origin of life? Human chemistry? Relationships? “Rules and ideas scattered everywhere. Where will be tomorrow? Do we even care?”, she play the oracle. Human order is only fleeting and momentary, but so is human contact and connection. “Rules and ideas never stay the same. If we have the chance, could we do it again?” The products of our creation are inconstant and impermanent. If offered the opportunity, do we cycle back through time and try things differently? Maybe the lyric is an innuendo. Let’s not worry about the future and do it one more time, before it’s all over. It all begins with chemistry, she repeats, but fades to silence far too quickly.
Having articulated these thoughts on the album, I’m naturally tempted to jettison the list’s current order and put this song in the zeroth position. Amazing how writing about music can make you feel!
Notes:
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Today’s birthday boy, Daniel Lanois’ production debut…...ambient first half
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I decided to keep all of the text included in Tristan’s post on the...Post Punk Tumblr...
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don’t ever stop, postpunk tumblr,...unabridged post)
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