We’ll often catch ourselves concluding that Band A has gone and made the same album all over again. But more often than not we don’t mean that, we’re only making excuses on their behalf. What we mean to say is that Band A has rehashed Album Z without the X Factor, become a flaky imitation of themselves, the songs aren’t a fraction of what they were and we won’t be listening to Album Z when Album Y will do just nicely, thank you very much. But the Hidden Cameras have made the same record again, no two ways about it, virtually identical really, and because that actually is the case we’re very thankful. Last year’s ‘The Smell Of Our Own’ was very fine indeed (just peruse our musings on it below) and only a certifiable fool would turn down another helping of that.
Of course we’ll never experience the same hair-raising tingles as when the troupe first rolled into town, nor recreate that special private moment of discovery, but those things are already in the bag, let’s not be greedy. Every expectation you place on this album it fulfils, like it was already ahead of you anyway. What you after then? Lofty harmonies and an overwhelmingly snug sense of group participation? Folksy chords strummed to within an inch of their weathered 80s REM classic tee? What sounds like rogue elements of an orchestra nipping off and getting frisky behind the kettledrum? Endless odes to explicitness, delivered by Joel Gibb as if his sexuality depended on it? Tambourines? You get all this and, well, no more. All this is what they do. You didn’t want anything else, did you?
You might lament the absence of exact equals for ‘Ban Marriage’ or ‘Golden Streams’, but the likes of the floaty ‘Builds The Bone’, radiant ‘I Believe in the Good Of Life’ and grisly ‘B Boy’ do alright on their own. You do get the feeling that, to some extent, this is more like joining the dots than an entirely new full-length record. Tracks included here have appeared as b-sides, such as the amazingly delicate wanting monologue ‘We Oh We’, or been a staple part of the live set and appeared on their ‘… Play The CBC Sessions’ mini-album, like the upbeat and invigorating ‘Music Is My Boyfriend’ (this album’s ‘Breathe On It’, or ‘Animals Of Prey’, or both). But let’s face it, it makes the package no less magical – remember, we are dealing with something that is more or less the same anyway.