Apostle Of Hustle Figure Themselves Out

The May 19 release date for Apostle Of Hustle's new album, Eats Darkness, is rapidly approaching. But the group's frontman has more important things to worry about: he just moved to Montreal.

"I'm learning Quebecois and getting a bicycle," says singer/guitarist Andrew Whiteman. "Those are the two big things for me."

Whiteman's laid-back attitude is in stark contrast with the subject matter of his band's third disc. Eats Darkness, as the title might imply, is an examination of violence, conflict and struggle, but it's also a treatise on the goodness that results when those darker sides of humanity are snuffed out.

That aesthetic lends itself well to Apostle Of Hustle's newfound sense of direction. They don't have a clue what they call the music they're making these days, but they have a good feeling about where they're headed.

"We're kind of inventing the genre of music that we play," Whiteman says. "We have five releases now, including EPs, so I'm starting to feel like I know what my band does."

The eclectic nature of the trio's tunes caused a great deal of confusion in the past over who should share the stage with them from night to night. Whiteman, who refuses to believe appropriate openers are an impossibility for his band, recently started an internet contest aimed at finding warm-up groups for Apostle Of Hustle's May tour.

"Apostle Of Hustle always had a funny thing about that," he says. "Who do we play with?

"We just thought it would be good to reach out to people that are interested in the band. And why not use the internet for what it's for, rather than going through the typical channels?

"All of the submissions we've gotten so far are amazing. I have to write some of these people... Some of these bands barely exist — you go into their MySpace page and they've only had 300 people listening to their music — but they're amazing.

"Some of them won't exactly work for what we're trying to do with this tour... It might not work out for us to have an eight-piece, colour-coordinated techno-folk band open for us, amazing as their music is."

Aside from a handful of album release shows, Whiteman and crew — bassist Julian Brown and drummer Dean Stone — don't have any plans for the rest of the year. But the frontman is confident they'll eventually hit the road for an extended stint.

"We're going to do the big Canada tour. Hopefully we're going to Germany to play with Giant Sand. We're just trying to see if we can get some funding for that... We'll do a full tour in the fall."

Here's where you can catch Apostle Of Hustle:

May 20 Guelph, ON @ E-Bar
May 21 Hamilton, ON @ The Casbah
May 22 Peterborough, ON @ The Montreal House
May 23 Ottawa, ON @ Zaphod Beeblebrox
May 27 Kingston, ON @ The Grad Club at Queen's University
May 29 Toronto, ON @ The Music Gallery
May 30 Waterloo, ON @ Starlight Room
June 6 Chicago, IL @ Metronome Celebration
June 7 Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle
June 9 Pittsburgh, PA @ Three Rivers Art Festival
June 10 New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom
June 12 Philadelphia, PA @ Kung Fu Necktie
June 13 Hoboken, NJ @ Maxwell's
July 11 Toronto, ON @ Olympic Island