Stunning Art Rock
The stage is wreathed in pink and white flowers; haloes of roses on amplifiers and tech equipment. Apostle of Hustle (Andrew Whiteman, Julian Brown and Dean Stone) is onstage and playing their stunning mode of art rock. One sits on a piece of wood in the centre and bangs his hands on the hollow part to make drum noises, while the other two play guitars in the Bob Dylan meets My Morning Jacket style they've epitomised since 1995. Singer/guitarist Andrew Whiteman wears a pure white jumpsuit and looks like a mad scientist or some sort of high-tech computer mechanic, or, more eponymously, a curiously gospelling apostle.
Koko's packed floor dance-shuffles to their brilliantly abnormal catalogue, and the Gestalt of the performance produces a very sweet feeling of embrasure - the acceptance audiences offer to real artists who are brave enough not to justify how they decide to charm us. If you're into Broken Social Scene (Andrew Whiteman plays lead guitar for them, and Stars' Torquil Campbell is ... involved with them, too), then you've already got the gist of what I mean.
They do a song for Easy E that makes me dance like a new romantic, despite the oddball nature of the piece - and this perhaps defines the show put on by Apostle of Hustle: oddball but wholly captivating.
He describes their final song as "a song about watching porno in hotel rooms" and the character playing out the song is named Sebastian. I realise during the performance that this song is probably about Sebastian Granger from DFA 1979 who is known to love hotel room porn. A very Canadian piece, which works because of the sheer number of Canucks in attendance..
Apostle of Hustle's show ends with the lights playing glaringly white upon the stage as Whiteman climbs atop a flower-laden piece of equipment. He spreads his arms like a prophet receiving the spirit of God - a queer feeling of Jesus in the air - and the artsy post-punk with reverb-blues guitar music ... ends. It is clear to all those present that this show's openers have made something magical, and we show our appreciation as they leave the stage. Their new album, National Anthem of Nowhere is out now, and they're touring it while opening for Stars all across Europe.