The Hidden Cameras
★★★★★
The Smell Of Our Own
ROUGH TRADE. CD/DL/LP
Toronto “gay folk church music” collective mark notable birthday.
“I’ve got a whole bible in me,” sings Joel Gibb on the homophobiadefying Fear Of ’Zine Failure, one of the fine B-sides included on this expanded 20th anniversary reissue of The Hidden Cameras’ second album. Go-go dancing between the sacred and profane, the grad-student-ish Gibb and his frequently balaclava’d co-conspirators subverted angelic choral rushes and Sunday school clap-alongs into songs of gay sex, love and trauma that sought absolutely no credit in the straight world. The deep melancholy of Shame or Boys Of Melody is tempered by the euphoric orchestrations of Golden Streams or The Man That I Am With My Man’s carnal joy, while Ban Marriage’s filthy challenge to heteronormativity still sounds like timpani-fuelled revolution rumbling under the flagstones. Demos and radio sessions offer another chance to get to know – sometimes pretty biblically – ajubilant testament of outsider pop.