On his third full-length LP, Eats Darkness, Apostle of Hustle's Andrew Whiteman all but eradicates the Cuban tres, the instrument that had been the lone distinguishing characteristic of his rather nebulous music. The band is now a power trio, with Julian Brown on bass and Dean Stone on drums. In jettisoning his reliance on Cuban and Brazilian folk traditions, Whiteman has discovered a new musical personality that is both more prosaic and more sharply defined: Eats Darkness rocks harder than prior work, with crisper edges, while feeling more playful and adventurous.
It works when Whiteman sticks to his indie-rock comfort zone. He has an unremarkable voice and a sketchy track record when it comes to memorable melody, but he also has a real knack for tooling terrific parts. It's admirable how his best songs outstrip his resources by sheer diligence; plenty of musicians have done less with more. "Eazy Speaks" is a great example of Whiteman packing salient details into a brisk, approachable framework. It zips right along on a crafty riff filled with decorative hitches and fillips. "Soul Unwind" is another winner, its titular refrain unfurling like a victory banner above cascading guitars and tweaky studio embellishments. "Xerses" gets a long way on its lyrical bassline alone.
When Whiteman ventures further afield in his songwriting, the results range from tepid to occasionally execrable. The title song pairs a weak-tea IDM track with thin-toned electric guitar noodling to zero effect. Nearly a third of the album's 13 tracks are given over to second-rate DOOM-style sample collages, using sound effects and the voices of artists such as Stan Brakhage and Kenneth Patchen in rather facile ways. They recreate the insane rapper's culture-as-playground sensibility without tapping into his eerie, subtle logic, and while they give the record what passes for a vague conceptual center-- revolutionary, society-in-decline stuff that is borne out in lyrics derisively peppered with the names of corporations-- they also convey a sense of unappealing sanctimony while obscuring the album's through-line.
And then there's "Perfect Fit". There comes a moment of truth in every indie rocker's life when he thinks, "Gee, I should try my hand at a sort of dub reggae song." Ideally, he shares this thought with a trusted friend who shakes him by the shoulders until he relents. Whiteman must have kept it to himself, or maybe he just has unshakable shoulders. Either way, indie-reggae doesn't look good on anyone. I can't help but think more could've been done. Didn't anyone notice that he was experimenting with excessive vocal reverb and stabby guitar delay? Might his bandmates have caught him browsing Peter Tosh comps at the record store and intervened? Where were the parents in all of this?
"Perfect Fit" is also emblematic of the album's shaky coherence-- when there is both peppy indie-rock and ponderous pseudo-reggae, how can the center hold? As a whole, Eats Darkness feels haphazard in a way that shades into self-indulgence. Its adventurous spirit is culpable for its moderate highs and lows alike. It's overstuffed, sure, but prune out the interstitials, "Perfect Fit", and a couple of the weaker indie-rock tracks, and a generously portioned EP of sturdy, calculatedly raucous tunes remains.
