The Hidden Cameras
Mississauga Goddam
[Rough Trade; 2004]
Rating: 5.8
Shock value, like youth, is fleeting. Remember Jackass: The Movie? You and a couple of buddies snuck in with a six-pack of Miller High Life after passing around a bong named Captain Jack, and for 87 blessed minutes, you almost believed bungee-cord wedgies and unabashed homoeroticism were the pinnacle of comedic history. But the next morning, in the cold glare of a Chicago November, you weren't exactly pining for a sequel.
Actually, maybe that wasn't you. Anyway, the comparison is unfair, because The Hidden Cameras, led by sugarcoated pervert Joel Gibb, are infinitely more amusing than anything Steve-O could jam up his rectum. The Smell of Our Own, the band's Rough Trade debut, was a subversively catchy accomplishment, full of lavish pop and explicit homosexuality. Their latest, Mississauga Goddamn, is a fading echo of the original, and while that's way better than a new Johnny Knoxville vehicle, it still feels like the season South Park stopped surprising and all your friends switched back to Simpsons reruns on Wednesday nights.
Named for a dam in Gibb's suburban Ontario hometown, the new record confirms the young maestro's knack for bright AM pop melodies. Saccharine love songs like "We Oh We" or "Builds the Bone" could almost be mistaken for that Bread single you once got on a mixtape from a high school crush. Fortunately, Gibb still can barely let a song go by without a graphic description of gay lovin', giving even the schmaltziest moments a gleeful dissonance. Like this line from "That's When the Ceremony Starts": "I drank from the wine that came from inside/ The heart of his meat and the splurge of his sweet."
Lingering beneath the album's sunny exterior is Gibb's unease over his Mississauga upbringing. When doubling as sexual innuendoes, these images subtly rebuke pious bread-breakers who would condemn his lifestyle. Equally clever is Gibb's tack of cloaking explicit lyrics in perky arrangements to which those same churches might take very kindly. The depth of his resentment finally leaches out through the lyrics of the title track, a languid shuffle drenched in Pet Sounds strings and harmonies. "I'm wearing my disguise/ Until I rid my life of Mississauga Goddam," Gibb admits.
At their best, Gibb and his ever-expanding cast of accompanists stitch together a disguise as beautiful as a Technicolor dreamcoat. But despite the strength of "Music Is My Boyfriend" and lush single "The Fear Is On", I continually find myself humming songs from the debut instead. "Ban Marriage" was truly brilliant: a hook-filled pop ditty about the silliness of marriage, at a time when the issue of marriage was particularly close to the hearts of many. And "Golden Streams"-- well, it remains the loveliest tune ever recorded about peeing on one's partner. In their stead, Gibb drops repetitive stinkers like "B Boy" or "I Want Another Enema". I'll get back to you on the Jackass sequel, but according to IMDB, it went straight to video.
-Marc Hogan, August 19th, 2004
Review by James Christopher Monger
Toronto's Hidden Cameras do their best to avoid being pigeonholed as "that band that sings about urine" by writing more songs about urine on their infectious third release, Mississauga, Goddam. Singer/songwriter/guitarist Joel Gibb's clever observation on life, love, and gay culture are just as naughty and scene-stealing as they were on 2003's Smell of Our Own, but there's a newfound sense of poignancy that overrides much of Mississauga's patchwork nihilism. Fans of the chamber pop collective's Phil Spector wall of sex will be happy to know that all of the group's signature strings, glockenspiels, and harp swells remain, though this time around they're as clear as day, resulting in a vast improvement over Smell's often murky go-go dancer atmospherics. The first half of Mississauga is peerless. Opening with the brain-sticking "Doot Doot Ploot," it pays homage to everything from '70s soft rock ("Builds the Bone") to Belle & Sebastian-style U.K. faux-Motown ("Fear Is On") before descending into a whirlpool of doubt that finds the band second-guessing their own success. Live favorite "Bboy," a sexually charged barnburner if there ever was one, suffers from the brittle orchestral production that so successfully complements outstanding tracks like "I Believe in the Good of Life" and "That's Where the Ceremony Starts," and the sophomoric "I Want Another Enema" makes "Golden Showers" sound like Shakespeare -- even the winsome title track, which is lovely on its own, gets dragged under by heartless trio of tracks before it. Those criticisms aside, Mississauga, Goddam is impossible to ignore, both melodically and thematically. It's genuinely fun, endlessly danceable, and custom-made for cavorting and convertible driving, and hearing Gibb -- who sounds like a hydra topped with the heads of Morrissey, Jake Shears, and John Denver -- sing a line like "So he seduced me in my dream/I kissed his ugly gangly greens/he swallowed my pee" is really no different than AC/DC's Brian Johnson croaking "She was a fast machine/she kept her motor clean/she was the best damn woman that I ever seen." All night long, indeed.
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