The Hidden Cameras: "Walk On"

“Walk On” is the first taste of the Hidden Cameras’ upcoming Origin:Orphan, which, I have to assume, is the long-awaited psych-pop record Joel Gibb had promised in his 2006 CMG interview: “[it will be] sort of an AWOO. Like an extension of AWOO in some ways, but more psychedelic.”

First: of course this song, and eventually Orphan, is an extension of AWOO (2006), just as that record had been the obvious but fulfilling extension of Mississauga Goddam (2004), and that of Smell of Our Own (2003). In the six years since his debut, Gibb, along with the Cameras’ ever-changing roster, has refined his debut’s basic approach more than truly develop or shift it, experimenting with arrangements while clenching tightly to the kind of familiar songwriting that has come to define the band as much as their live shows. “Walk On” sounds exactly like the Hidden Cameras in a way all their songs do—surprise, it’s repetitious and built around a well-oiled quiet/loud dynamic—but slower and brooding, much closer in feel to Andrew Bird-isms of “Follow These Eyes” than the celebratory pop of “Doot Doot Plot” or “Lollipop.” Here Gibb cowers at the sinister and overbearing arrangement—with distorted guitar bubbling underneath gothic stabs of strings, horns, and synths—even as things relent for the chorus’s vague pleas (warnings?) of “I can see you in the night / Walk on, walk on.”

It’s good, dramatic, surprisingly stark stuff—but psychedelic? I don’t know. Perhaps Gibb spoke too soon; that quote was from three years ago now, after all, before sessions for this record even began. Or maybe he really meant cinematic (somehow), which the song does clearly aspire to with its plodding, aggressive atmosphere. This could also be a red herring of sorts, a lead-heavy ballad strategically placed dead-center in Origin:Orphan, released early to throw us off scent. We have a few months until we find out for sure, but in the meantime “Walk On” hints less at the expected psych-pop take on the Cameras’ sound than one markedly claustrophobic and grim.

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