My Top 1000 Songs #840: Echo Beach

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

Martha & The Muffins were always a little too experimental to slot in neatly with the late 70s/early 80s new wave scene. They could write a contemporary-sounding pop song, but throw in the edge of, say, The Slits or Flying Lizards or even Wire. But they struck a perfect balance with the single "Echo Beach," off 1980's Metro Music. It's a catchy, radio-friendly track perfectly constructed for the not-yet-arrived MTV, but there's also something haunting and just a little otherworldly about the music. Sure, the lyrics about dreaming of escaping the daily office routing--"my job is very boring, I'm an office clerk" is something that would pop into my head way too many times back in my lawyering days--are seemingly blasé and mundane, and the overall vibe is oh so 80s... But there's something emotionally striking about the tune's atmospherics that sounds like nothing else, a transformative piece that makes the rest of the world stop for a moment as something totally new slyly creeps in.

Live 1980: