Andrew Whiteman, Broken Social Scene guitarist and Apostle of Hustle bandleader, is not an apostle, he's a hustler of hospital-cornered quilt of breezy, bouncy pop, with all of his more famous band's overlapping propulsion, but little of its chaotic bliss.
Where Folkloric Feel opted for cobwebby murk, National Anthem of Nowhere dovetails in bright, tidy corners. It's at once straight-laced and funky in the way that only indie rock can be. Tight, molded percussion and luxuriantly fluffed basslines make clean passes through delicately reverbed sheets of guitar and lathed synths. Affable vocals remake the music's nighttime throb as afternoon flirtation. The first record found Whiteman hung up on Cuban music, but National Anthem of Nowhere seems less discriminating in which genre particles it assimilates. The accumulation doesn't change the music's vanilla flavor, but it makes it bolder: The languorous "NoNoNo" threads throttled hand percussion through smoldering gypsy folk; the icily cragged "Jimmy Scott Is the Answer" is a mild-mannered indie rock approximation of classic soul; the post-rocky squalls of "Fast Pony for Victor Jara" are shot through with juicy tropicalia. On "Haul Away", Whiteman even manages to merge two of indie rock's favorite exotic templates-- the Western movie twang and the sea chantey.
Whiteman is aptly named-- there's a stiffness to his swing that, despite the house beat pulsing through "My Sword Hand's Anger" and the svelte disco bass on "The Naked & Alone", makes it better for headphones than dancing. This is an audiophile's record that encourages appreciative observation more than participatory engagement. Whiteman's vocals are strikingly similar to Jason Collett's; they have the same grainy, ingenuous croon, but the music deftly assembled around it makes Apostle a different thing that BSS (less rock) or Collett's solo project (less rustic). Galumphing percussion and angelic synths flesh out the fluidly hitching indie rock of "Cheap like Sebastian", and the vivid yet carefully time guitar fireworks of the title track are capped with a breath-arresting horn finale. By the time the piano filigrees of "A Rent Boy Goes Down" leaned into a mean, distorted cha-cha-cha, I was charmed enough to berth on Whiteman's international cruise ship, even though it really felt more like reading a Let's Go! guide than traveling.
