“I drank from the wine that came from inside/The heart of his meat and the splurge of his sweet,” sings Joel Gibb, frontman of Toronto pop renegades the Hidden Cameras. The lyrics, from Mississauga, Goddam’s “That’s When The Ceremony Starts,” would turn more than a few heads in most churches, but not at Philadelphia’s First Unitarian Church, where the Hidden Cameras sent the modest-sized crowd into musical bliss.

The summer of 2006 marks a period of transition for the Hidden Cameras. The band finds itself with a new record deal with Arts & Crafts and preparing for the release of its third full-length album, Awoo, due in September. In order to preview the new material and fine-tune the tracks live, the Hidden Cameras set out on sporadic dates from July through September, starting in Philadelphia.

The Hidden Cameras are known for their live theatrics with plenty of nudity and dancing, but tonight it was literally a dress rehearsal with the band firing on all cylinders. There were no naked dancers or stripping, but one thing was clear: The Hidden Cameras came prepared to shake the walls of the humid church basement and the hips of the adoring crowd.

The set was anchored by songs from the band’s first two albums, but the real highlights came from unheard Awoo tracks, which garnered impassioned crowd reactions. First up was a slice of Gibb in his best Michael Stipe impression on the jangly new title track. On the ballad “Heaven Turns To,” Gibb’s voice—wrapped in a warm blanket of weepy violin—seized the audience’s attention. Another Awoo show-stopper came during the sparkling “She’s Gone,” which should solidify Gibb as one of the finest pop craftsmen of the modern era—shoulder-to-shoulder with Stuart Murdoch and Stephin Merritt—for composing pop hooks that paradoxically sound old and new at once.

Of course, a Hidden Cameras experience wouldn’t be complete without at least some level of theatrics. That moment came when the group donned red bandanas over its eyes during “Smells Like Happiness” (from 2003’s The Smell Of Our Own), linking the pointed lyrics (“happy we are when we choose to wear the blindfold”) to the visual message. Under dim overhead lights, the Cameras shuffled through other staples such as the bouncy “Doot Doot Plot” and “Fear Is On,” which stirred the crowd into a frenzy every time Gibb reached the hand-job anthem’s hook-laden chorus.

The only kink in an otherwise flawless performance occurred during the intro for The Smell Of Our Own’s “Golden Streams.” As blasts of church-organ drone kicked into the song, Gibb’s guitar began giving off intense feedback through the speakers. The eight-piece band gave a deer-in-the-headlights look for a solid minute-and-a-half while a sound technician powered down Gibb’s guitar, leading to an unplanned acoustic ending for the show.

Afterward, the entire band could be seen in the crowd conversing with fans, a fitting post-show scene. The music was the star of the show, and with no gimmicks, the Hidden Cameras left the wide-eyed crowd desperately awaiting Awoo’s release.

—Ryan Staskel