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How do you love your September: hot and spicy or lightly toasty? Now that we’re at the mid-point of the month, it seems like we’re getting a little of both in equal measure. It feels like just last week my bottom was all salty from the summer sweats, and now I’m deliberating on how many layers are too little or too much to go out and get the morning paper. I know, I know: it’s so Canadian of me to bemoan the weather. But I am Canadian (and say that with all the irony I can muster), and that’s just what I do, along with picking out a pair of albums well-suited for the in-between times we’re in. The Hidden Cameras bring the sweaty, glittery, peak-summer heat, while Winter cools it down with something more moonlit and reflective. Together, they are a solid soundtrack for when you’re still clinging to the last of the long, hot days but secretly craving sweater weather.
Totally unplanned on my part, but sometimes the best double features just program themselves. Songs denoted with ✦ have been added to the hear [t]here playlist, available on Music and Tidal.
The Hidden Cameras, Bronto
I keep seeing people moaning about there not being a song of the summer for 2025, which leads me to believe that every single one of them has yet to experience the euphoric high of the Hidden Cameras “Quantify.” This throbbing banger dropped at midnight on August 1, and it instantly soundtracked every one of my top-down, stereo-blasting road trips from that point forward (even if it was just a trip to the hardware store and back).
Bronto perfectly places Joel Gibb’s one-time “orchestral gay church folk pop” in that most holy of gay churches—the disco. The first Hidden Cameras album in almost a decade is a sonic evolution that makes perfect sense for anyone who has followed the Cameras since the project emerged from Gibb’s bedroom with Ecce Homo at the turn of the century. The nightclub is where the sacred and profane consecrate their love/hate relationship, and Gibb brings his signature wit and commentary on the queer human condition to a collection of songs that throb, pulse, swell, and explode in ecstatic synths and shudder-inducing rhythms. “Undertow” pulls you in with mid-80s electro-pop drama (that gets an essential remix by Mr. Vince Clarke of Erasure, Yaz, and Depeche Mode) and opening track, “How Do You Love?”, is a clean, crisp distillation of the decade’s synth-soul sound (perfectly suited for a souped-up remix from Pet Shop Boys).
Winter, Adult Romantix
As a counterpoint to “Quantify,” Winter’s “Without You” is the soundtrack to late-night, sleepy freeway stretches when the city’s lights streak by and it feels like every flicker in the night sky is a memory coming into focus for just a moment. Adult Romantix, the latest from singer-songwriter Samira Winter’s eponymous solo project, drifts through the space between glow and shadow, charting the highs and lows of love, longing, and connection. Rather than romanticizing love, Winter lays bare its sweetness, its ache, its quiet devastations—each song lingering like the afterimage of a flashbulb in the dark.
I love the way opener “Just Like a Flower” (and its accompanying intro interlude) lets distortion creep in at the edges, turning its delicate dream-pop into something more conflicted and alive. “In My Basement Room” feels like stumbling upon a box of momentos you forgot you kept. I also love how Winter sprinkles her native Portuguese throughout Adult Romantix; it feels like she’s sharing an intimate secret or memory without revealing it all. “Sometimes I Think About Death” plays with musical language, capturing the sense of “spinning in a dizzy whirl”- a state of late-night obsessions that leaves you wide awake when the sun comes up, without a sense of resolution.
a little more [t]here [t]here 🪩
I wrote this 20th anniversary retrospective review of the Hidden Cameras’ The Smell of Our Own for DOMINIONATED, which I’m proud to say was recognized among the best Canadian music writing of 2023 by Del Cowie.
One of the very first posts I did for DOMINIONATED was about the song “The Day I Left Home” from the last Hidden Cameras studio album, Home On Native Land, from 2016.