2003
The Smell Of Our Own
About This Album
With all the hype around the Hidden Cameras and their "gay folk church music," you'd think they were the second coming. Unlike their influences, such as the Magnetic Fields and Belle & Sebastian, who usually couch the nitty-gritty details of lust and sex in witty metaphors or avoid them altogether, Joel Gibb and company not only celebrate sex and its accompanying smells and stains, but inflate them to divine status on their second album, The Smell of Our Own. This is a worthy accomplishment -- too much indie rock and indie pop is notoriously phobic when it comes to singing about sex of any kind -- but it seems to be the main thing that differentiates the Hidden Cameras from the many other bands that use not only Belle & Sebastian and the Magnetic Fields, but Brian Wilson, Phil Spector, and other purveyors of cleverly written symphonic pop as touchstones. That's on record, at least; the Cameras' legendary, theatrical performances -- which have been held in churches and adult theaters alike and feature strippers, films, and dancing galore -- would doubtlessly make the songs on The Smell of Our Own that much more technicolor-brilliant. Stripped of that context, the album almost sounds like an original cast recording of a musical -- the next best thing to being there, but not the same by a long shot.
Track List

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