Can you make a mature album with a band called the Hidden Cameras? It's been an appropriate stage name over the past decade for Canada's Joel Gibb, describing aptly the explicit sexuality of his lyrics and the dark undertone hiding beneath his baroque orchestrations and genteel vocals. But most of all, the name telegraphs the band's distinctive playfulness (if we're thinking hidden cameras more in the "Candid Camera" sense than the Erin Andrews sense), a joyful glee that turns their concerts into pep rallies and makes Gibb's songs humorous without being novelty.
But the inevitable trajectory of any band, any life really, is to evolve from goofy prankster fun to rote adult seriousness. That's not always a bad thing, musically, but can the foundations of a concept like the Hidden Cameras-- with its Oscar Wilde wryness-- withstand the thematic shift? When asked about the old "jubilant" material, Gibb told a hometown website, "that naivety is kind of worn, I would say." Depressing words from the man who titled his last record with perhaps the most economical description of the band's sound and message to date (Awoo) and who bookended his best album with two songs about watersports-- and I don't mean synchronized swimming.
Like a pitcher tipping his curveball, Origin: Orphan signals this increased gravity in familiar fashion: two minutes of thick drone to introduce the dreary "Ratify the New". Wide-screen ambitious, the crescendos are both too bleak to be inspirational and too mannered to be cathartic. The album's other landmarks are equally drenched in gloom: with its chattering preset drums and air-raid guitars, the self-loathing title track is easily the dreariest thing Gibb's ever set to tape, and closer "Silence Can Be a Headline" is a sludge through last-dance arpeggios and maudlin strings. Only "Walk On" stands out among the new-direction material, retaining the boisterous chamber pop the Hidden Cameras are known for, but cranking the tempo down to a New Orleans funeral crawl with Gibb's searching tenor fitfully peeking through.
But as depressing as these hit-or-mostly-miss attempts to slow down and get serious may be, it's even more deflating to hear the songs that approach the Hidden Cameras' old team spirit but fall short. "He Falls to Me" and "Colour of a Man" both contain disappointingly monotone vocal lines rather than Gibb's typically ornate vocal runs, and show glimpses of hitting the raucous folk-punk strides off earlier material before slipping out of gear.
Only in a couple of places does the band's old giddiness shine through. "Underage" is a brief reprise of Gibb's sauciness, with a risqué refrain-- "let's do it like we're underage"-- made taboo when Gibb asks his partner, "I'll pretend you're seven, you'll pretend I'm eight." The song's Graceland-ish afro/electro-pop vibe is also very in tune with indie trends, a timeliness the Hidden Cameras come by honestly after peppering their songs with Ladysmith-lite backing chants. And Gibb adds a synth-pop edge-- flirting dangerously with the band's Magnetic Fields resemblance-- on the 8-bit beat of "Do I Belong?" and by borrowing Pete Townshend's old keyboard for the contagious "In the NA".
But when Gibb blandly promises there to "marry one day in the NA," it's hard not to recall his impish proposal to "Ban Marriage" three albums ago, just as the gay marriage movement began to catch fire. That mischief is largely missing from Origin: Orphan, and the lack of lyrical cleverness seems to have infected the music as well, making for a mostly cloudy listen from a formerly sunny-day band. You can't blame Joel Gibb for wanting to grow up, but nobody wants to watch a hidden camera unless it's focused on something fun and forbidden.
