Apostle Of Hustle

Eats Darkness (Arts & Crafts)

By Rebecca Shore
Published: June 7th, 2009 | 7:00am

Apostle Of Hustle makes a case for their third effort, Eats Darkness, as a concept album. The concept is a nod to the shamanistic practice of ingesting poison as a way to negotiate between states of being — this practice is thought to accelerate the discovery of a cure. Thus, eat darkness to rid yourself of darkness. Heavy stuff.

Though frontman Andrew Whiteman (Broken Social Scene) described each track as “tapas at the banquet of conflict...a small contribution to the articulation of a fucked and beautiful world," the song melodies themselves don’t exactly evoke angst and evil. Those themes bare their claws more obviously in the tracks that mesh sound effects and spoken-word poetry, which are interspersed throughout the album.

In the opener, “Snakes,” an indignant woman explains the etymology of using snakes to describe someone untrustworthy (“A credible fact about snakes is that they got both boy and girl reproductive parts / Who could trust a bitch that could literally go fuck herself?”). “Soul Unwind” is a hedonistic dance hymn with bouncy percussion. Though its role on the album is unclear, the song is trance-inducing, addictive, and chased by nearly a minute-and-a-half of rough-and-tumble noise (sirens, screams, a machine gun firing, a ticking clock). The title track is an ambient composition free of lyrics and taken out of the album’s context. “Blackberry” could be just a freewheeling summer jam.

For that matter, pull all the songs out from under the overwrought “concept album” framework and they instantly become more enjoyable. The lofty claims made in the ridiculous concept (from the press release: "One eats darkness and somehow is able to excrete out pure light") serve only to set expectations sky high in terms of musical innovation, and under those standards, Apostle Of Hustle falls flat. And if the concept is a farce, well then the humor is lost on this reviewer. But with all the nuances that flesh out the songs, the music begs to be heard through pricey Sennheisers or a home stereo rather than iPod earbuds: a sign of solid composing. So what do “conflict tapas” — and for that matter, darkness — taste like? Hard to stomach when swallowed with the conceptual pill, a more appetizing treat without it.

—