anita perkins

Download Habitat “No More Humanity”

Habitat’s most recent album is a derailed ghost train. It is a deformed Eno stripped to just a beat-box. It’s predominantly dark, moaning with echoes; the vocals are a grotesque dissonant timbre. “Put Your Baby on the Train” is Evol-like paranoia. I think of Dali’s Car or Swans, but Rich Eckersley and Kelly O’Hare, the duo who perform as Habitat, are in their own category. I enjoyed the bizarre lyrics and obscure hints of speech throughout. “Put Your Baby on the Train” caps the album halfway. A Tangerine Dream segue leads into “Train,” with murmuring people and approaching train whistles. I imagined ghosts, waiting for a ghost train. From there, it’s more subliminal and paranoid; the poetry is strange and wonderful. Forlornness—the album slows down: there seems a complete evacuation of feeling—the mood escapes words. One critique: approaching the end, I hoped for a few conciliatory notes. I did not get them; but the powerful second-to-last track, “Spider, I’m Sorry,” fades into eight minutes of repetition with a soliloquy. The narrator reckons up the last day of his life and the regrets he holds as he “walks into the light.”

—Bill Leighty