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Never mind the title of Hidden Cameras' third album Mississauga Goddam.
Joel Gibb, the band's visionary singer and songwriter, insists he actually likes living in Toronto but admits that while recording parts of their new album Origin: Orphan in Berlin, he fell in love with the German city and he's planning to do a lot more there in the future.
That means a lot less in Mississauga.
Goddam.
"I've been spending a lot of time in Berlin. It's a really big city, people there are more internationally tuned. I felt very free there," Gibb sniffles while nursing a bad cold.
"Germany is open-minded about all kinds of music. We forget how closed-minded Canada can be. And provincial. I love my home in Toronto but I think that Berlin is a good place for me to grow as an artist."
Clearly, the change of scenery has encouraged Gibb to take more than the usual risks. Origin: Orphan, Hidden Camera's most playfully experimental, and unpredictable album as Gibb pushes the band's theatrics even further into live theatre.
"We've been ambitious on all four records, but this time we experimented with different sounds and instrumental pairings, with more horns as well as the classic Hidden Cameras sound," Gibb says.
Recently, they played a concert that showed the band headed more into theatre with a large choir, sets and choreography, with the musicians playing violins, cellos and guitars blindfolded and moving in choreographed precision, some as go-go dancers, others as the actors.
It turned out to be one of the most imaginative pop shows the band has ever done, and Gibb is now expanding into a full-fledged piece of musical theatre he hopes to do in Berlin at a future date.
"We can be whatever we want to be," says Gibb, who once described his music as "gay church folk music."
Anything but quixotic, the politically active, gay-positive singer-songwriter has been going in whatever artistic direction he's chosen since the Cameras released their 2003 debut Smell of Our Own.
That album basically broke down the door for Gibb and his troops, whose membership, like that of Broken Social Scene, is remarkably elastic. Former members such as Gentleman Reg and Final Fantasy's Laura Barrett and Owen Pallett still drop in and grace an occasional performance.
It's all part of Gibb's vision for the band, to push the band into theatre.
Perhaps the band's move to Europe has been inevitable. Like Antony and the Johnsons, The Cameras' reputation has been stronger in Europe than North America, which still embraces its classic-rock and hip-hop, and after touring Europe five times since 2006, they feel quite at home across the pond.
"We're more global now than we've ever been," Gibb says. "I don't like to be pinned down."