Even in these days of kazillions of bands vying for elbow room, it's good to know the best and most unlikely musical outfits can still stand on their own.
And let's face it: there's plenty to set subversive Canadians THE HIDDEN CAMERAS apart from the pack. If it isn't their ever-evolving line-up orbiting mastermind Joel Gibb that draws you in, you'd hardly fail to notice the male go-go dancers and the penchant for playing gigs (or "happenings" as the Camears rightly prefer) in decidedly NON rock'n'roll venues like churches, art galleries, porn cinemas and old peoples' homes. Not to mention sneaking the most explicit sexually-oriented lyrics below the radar of the supposed taste-makers out there. Despite the evangelical fervour of their music and the large number of folk onstage, The Polyphonic Spree they definitely ain't.
Crucially, though, it's Gibb's arrangement skills and killer pop nous that rams the point home on record. Yes, I grant you songs largely obsessed with (sometimes clandestine) sexual prowess and/ or failure are liable to get the ears to, er, prick up pretty damn quickly, but it helps that they're set to some of the most dynamite and downright catchy orchestrally-aligned pop going since Brian Wilson swapped the studio for the sandpit.
"Mississauga Goddam" is the second Hidden Cameras album, and by my reckoning it's at least as good as their startling debut album "The Smell Of Our Own." Opening tune "Doot Doot Plot" hurls us headlong into Joel Gibb's strange world and within seconds we're in brilliantly catchy swoon-pop territory. Harps, strings and thrumming pop backbeats drive on Gibb's thinly-veiled desires and he sings the chorus ("You've ben pulling your Pol Pot for long enough/ I've been cooking in your pot for long enough") with a curious mixture of carnal desire, voyeurism and terror. It's a little disconcerting, but truly magical all the same.
Great start, and little coming through in the slipstream disappoints either. Gibb's lyrics are invariably painfully personal and even when he allies them with joyfully swelling melodies like on "Fear Is On" and the brilliant recent single "I Believe In The Good Of Life" he's never less than honest about his frustrations. "His father's gone, but I can't unwind when the fear is on," he mourns over one liaison during the former, while on "...Good Of Life" the intoxicating pop thrills are tempered by lines like: "I flee on my bike from the crimes we made, and I did not use those drugs or steal those army pants." However tongue-in-cheek Joel likes to be, there's clearly pain and anguish in there as well.
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Elsewhere, The Cameras quirk out to great effect. "B-boy", for example, is another cautionary tale of everyday intolerance set against a tune that's both dramatic and jerky in a Devo-ish way, with Gibb delivering his vocals in an inconsistent fashion that veers from impassioned to plain deranged. The effect is jarring and startling, as is "I Want Another Enema", which is murmur-thrum pop with brushed drums, timpani and a funky bassline adding to the band's customary orchestral bounce.
Nonetheless, the euphoria's never far away. In fact, if ever there was a quintessential Hidden Cameras song, then surely it's "Music Is My Boyfriend", which is the very epitome of joyful, tambourine heavy pop with a subversive lyrical twist (e.g: "Music filled my mug with Vaseline/ I gave him a choke") and a fade-out with perhaps the most heavenly choir ever recorded. Indeed, even if the closing title track -named after a suburb of the band's Toronto home patch - is a slower and more contemplative portrait of a society still riven with intolerance, it's pitted against the most dignified arrangement you could wish for as the credits roll.
"Mississauga Goddam", then, is a second unmissable helping from a band who are threatening to take being 'different' into the mainstream. And not before time. It was the Manics who once proclaimed "all rock'n'roll is homosexual", but it's The Hidden Cameras who are the embodiment of great popsters who lean towards the lavender.
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