Joel Gibb in Torotoist

David Topping at Torontoist has a new interview up with Joel Gibb who, for all intents and purposes, is the Hidden Cameras - that is to say that the band could just as easily be called Joel Gibb and friends:

"the fantastic and always well-populated music collective whose members have included Owen Pallett (Final Fantasy), Reg Vermue (Gentlemen Reg), Laura Barrett, Maggie MacDonald (Republic of Safety), Dave Meslin (founder of the Toronto Public Space Committee), Bob Wiseman, Steve Kado (founder of Blocks Recording Club, member of Barcelona Pavilion and Ninja High School), Ohad Benchetrit (Do Make Say Think), Don Kerr (The Rheostatics), and many, many others."

I have a few comments on the interview, one of which will have to be it's very own post. First I'd like to say that it's "gay" I get it already. I wish I could read just one interview where it didn't come up.

Topping:"It's certainly an angle that people come at the band with, though––like, here's this gay band. Do you think that's an unfair thing to place on [the Hidden Cameras]?"

Gibb:"I don't care. As long as people write about it, I'm just so happy people write about it. I don't really care. I mean, I just try not to read it. But I don't care. I just think it's great that people can just take whatever interpretation they want to take from it, you know? It's important to be truthful in your art, so that's all I'm trying to do. I'm not trying to up anything."

The truth is I really don't care if Gibb is gay or not, if the music speaks to homosexuals on a level different than it speaks to me, that's cool but at what point can we stop reminding everyone? At this point it's getting a bit, to me at least, like calling Ray Charles or Stevie Wonder 'black music'. As long as it's good music who really cares about the race, religion, gender or sexual orientation of the performer(s)? I sometimes think that interviewers are just trying to demonstrate how homophobic they're not by coming back to the point over and over.

In another part of the interview there is this exchange:

Topping:"You told Eye that this album would have the darkest content you've ever written [one song, Gibb told Sarah Liss, is "a lot darker than anything we’ve done"], and it seemed like Awoo had moments of that too. Is there a movement towards that?"

Gibb:"Yeah. There's a lot of dark songs. But...each song is different, so I don't really want to generalize, because each song is so different..."

Topping:"It seems like some of the older stuff can be characterized by being really jubilant, like "Smells Like Happiness."

Gibb:"Yeah, that naivety is kind of worn, I would say."

To which I would just like to say, I hope it isn't too dark, or the naivety too worn. I mean if you pay attention to the lyrics the Hidden Cameras have had some pretty upbeat songs with some fairly dark lyrics and I'm good with that. But in a world where dark topics are everywhere it is good to escape with music that makes you want to move and dance and that somehow makes things seem not so bad. I hope the new Hidden Cameras stuff doesn't lose that.

Anyway, in a bit I'll post a bit about Joel's comments on 'the mainstream' but for now, you should read the rest of the interview.