Ban Marriage!

[nfotxn]

You may have read about them from xbearxrx but I wanted to post this little snippet about The Hidden Cameras, who are probably the coolest thing to happen in the queer scene in Toronto in a long time.

I remember the night where Dave's cub4bear boyfriend Mark suggested we go see this band that everyone's been talking about. After waiting outside in the frozen rain and not knowing what to expect I found myself a little dumbfounded when the Hidden Cameras got up on stage (or should I say the Alter of Bloor St United) and started to play. It was a performance that coming out of I can only define as spiritual. Of course two of my friends sat at the back of the church sneering like children dragged to Sunday morning mass. But that's ok, different strokes for different folks.

Anyhow I can only define the blissful sound as infectious and the drama is purely classical. Anyone looking for a really positive sounding record that bucks the trends of post rock, nu-metal, electroclash and pop should check out "The Smell of Our Own" by The Hidden Cameras.

It's delightfully subversive.

A Canadian pop masterpiece from feisty Hidden Cameras
by MICHAEL BARCLAY
THERECORD.COM | INSIDER


April, 2003

HIDDEN CAMERAS
The Smell of Our Own (Evil Evil/Outside)

It's been a year and a half since Joel Gibb and his three-ring circus of self-described ''gay church folk music'' set the Toronto media on fire, and only now do we get to hear his musical vision fully realized on disc; Gibb's collection of four-track demos, Ecce Homo, only hinted at this.

Whatever the reasons for the wait, it was well worth it: Gibb and producer Andy Magoffin (Two-Minute Miracles, Royal City, Constantines) have crafted a Canadian pop masterpiece.

This is evident right from the moment the curtain lifts on Golden Streams, where a droning pipe organ, a cascading harp and a heavenly choir of voices and strings make the most classically dramatic entrance possible, followed shortly by insistent sleigh bells, rolling tympani and a sweet folk melody -- surely, this is the most majestic beginning to a Canadian epic since the Rheostatics opened Whale Music with swelling strings on Self-Serve Gas Station.

The beauty of the Hidden Cameras' music lies in its simplicity. Despite the potential for bombastic overload -- especially live, where membership can swell up to 15 (key members include several ex-Guelphites) -- the focus is always on Gibb's three-chord songs and a throbbing beat that lies somewhere between the primitive pulse of the Velvet Underground's Moe Tucker and four-on-the-floor disco.

While the music is undoubtedly the sweetest sound you'll hear this year, your tolerance for the Hidden Cameras will ultimately hinge on Gibb's lyrics. His homoeroticism is loud and proud, making Rufus Wainwright a raging heterosexual by comparison.

Gibb's imagery is sometimes poetically beautiful and inspiring, sometimes downright crass. He revels in blurring the sacred and profane, an exercise that could be perceived as either clever or juvenile, which is probably his point exactly.

Subversion is Gibb's favourite trick, and it's hard not to enjoy the gleeful single Ban Marriage, a rollicking story that offers a satirical response to legally sanctioned gay relationships.

And then there's the fact that he recorded a choir of friends inside the Church of the Holy Trinity, singing a song entitled Shame, urging a closeted married man to go out and cruise.

With few exceptions, Gibb pulls all this off easily. And even when he doesn't, the arrangements are so lush and the vocals are such that you could be humming his insanely catchy melodies for weeks before you realize what it is you're singing.

Sodomy never sounded so sweet!

Comments

[aadroma.livejournal.com]

Sodomy never sounded so sweet!

And really, who can beat a tag line like that? ^_-

Hey Now!

[plaidninja.livejournal.com]

André and I didn't just sneer.
We made out too.

[clauditorium.livejournal.com]

You just inadvertedly called it great make-out music!
I'll bet you play it all the time at home when you want to get André in the mood, don't ya?? Huh???

[plaidninja.livejournal.com]

Nah. It's more sneering music cause we did way more of that while we were there. Actually the quality and quantity of our making out increased dramaticly once we got the hell out of there. I think that music was severely impairing our ability to make out. The whole soaking wet from freezing rain thing might have had an impact to.
Nah, it was the music.

[shawnsyms.livejournal.com]

I find it hard to imagine either of you sneering with any level of intensity. I mean that in a good way...

[nfotxn.livejournal.com]

Yeah, those losers are all happy and shit!

Losers! ;)

[plaidninja.livejournal.com]

Okay, that's true, but it's also fun to tease Brodie so I embelished.