In this article the authors develop a new method to deal with maximal Cohen–Macaulay modules over non–isolated surface singularities. In particular, they give a negative answer on an old question of Schreyer about surface singularities with only countably many indecomposable maximal Cohen–Macaulay modules. Next, the authors prove that the degenerate cusp singularities have tame Cohen–Macaulay representation type. The authors' approach is illustrated on the case of k 

as well as several other rings. This study of maximal Cohen–Macaulay modules over non–isolated singularities leads to a new class of problems of linear algebra, which the authors call representations of decorated bunches of chains. They prove that these matrix problems have tame representation type and describe the underlying canonical forms.