On September 22, Arts & Crafts brings us yet another original & charming record to caper and cavort to. Origin:Orphan is the fourth full-length treasure from Toronto’s ever-burgeoning cache of sprightly minstrels, The Hidden Cameras. The album was recorded in Toronto, Ontario and Berlin, and feels as if it’s a kind of rollicking audio passport, each song another fabled adventure and another stamp allowing access as they cross the border along their daring, arcane journey, that at times feels a bit stormy but is mostly inspired by mirth. The track layout has a linear, narrative quality that plays along as well. 
The opening track, “Ratify The New,” builds slowly with anticipation, a humming preface to the story. The album’s first single, “In The NA,” is a jostling, synthy-sing-shout-along number that feverishly trumpets the story of this person/place/thing called “The NA” where people are held close, where demons and ghosts are battled, they spill their secrets, they marry, and where they ultimately triumph in under five minutes.
“He Falls To Me” is set to a super-sized and spirited whistle with clever lyrics and a classic indie-rock, punch-in-the-gut chorus that rivals some of the best. “Colour of a Man” is an impossibly smart and warm soliloquy, draped with heavy, heaving strings and adorned with a velvety Medieval-meaning choir. “Walk On” blew my mind on first listen as it’s one of the inkiest tracks that I’ve heard in awhile, a nod of approval that this self-proclaimed princess of darkness doesn’t give easily. It’s a heavy, heralding track with an uneasiness that evokes the devastating and disquieting side of Stevie Nicks when she sings “you will never get away from the sound of the woman who loves you…” in the spine-shivering chorus of her majesty’s Silver Springs. I really can’t give a band a better compliment than that if I tried.
The band is said to translate the innate theatricality and avant-garde nature of their sound to the stage by performing with up to forty-piece dance troupes and in alternative spaces such as churches and soccer fields, an experience that I’m definitely looking forward to when I check them out this fall in New York. I’ll let you know if the wizardry and wonder of the Cameras makes sense in the flesh.
Tracklisting:
01. Ratify The New
02. In The NA
03. He Falls To Me
04. Colour Of A Man
05. Do I Belong?
06. Walk On
07. Kingdom Come
08. Origin:Orphan
09. Underage
10. The Little Bit
11. Silence Can Be A Headline
The Hidden Cameras: website | myspace
