The Hidden Cameras

Toronto-based ensemble the Hidden Cameras emerged from the vision of vocalist, songwriter, and guitarist Joel Gibb, whose work fuses queer politics, explicit sexuality, symphonic indie pop, and theatrical spectacle that edges toward the devotional. Their first album, the 2001 release Ecce Homo issued on Gibb’s own Evil Evil imprint as a set of four-track demos, showcased a lean version of the group’s witty, acoustic-centered songcraft that invited comparisons to the Magnetic Fields and Belle & Sebastian. The collection also attracted Rough Trade, which thereby welcomed its first Canadian signing in the label’s twenty-five-year history. Live, the Hidden Cameras’ lavish presentations—often involving as many as thirty go-go dancers, strippers, and musicians, along with videos, projected lyrics, and vigorous audience interaction—quickly cultivated a broad and fervent following across Canada. The 2003 Rough Trade debut The Smell of Our Own conveyed a fuller sonic scope than Ecce Homo and carried the band’s subversively catchy material to listeners beyond their home country. In 2004 the group issued the long-gestating Mississauga Goddam, titled after the Toronto suburb where Gibb spent his early years. Awoo followed in 2006, presenting a somewhat milder iteration of the Cameras’ “gay church folk music.” Origin:Orphan arrived in 2009 and brought electronic textures into the mix, a move extended further on the expansive 2013 album AGE. Home on Native Land appeared in 2016, paying tribute to the band’s Canadian homeland through a pastoral sequence of country-folk songs.