Around this time last year, a childhood friend came to visit me in Philadelphia and she was raring to experience the storied music scene. We trekked to a trendy neighborhood across the Schuylkill to see some pals I knew play solo sets from their pensive singer-songwriter projects. By the third set, the volume at the alt-pop dance night in the front of the bar was overpowering the singers in the back, making for a challenging vibe. To close his set though, the last performer dropped the guitar and played a backing track that re-energized the room, strutting about the stage and the audience while singing an upbeat, unserious pop song. We all loved it a little too much.
Earnest, introspective music is not out of fashion—look at boygenius’ Grammy wins or the fanfare around the more reflective tracks from BRAT—but the words swirling around The Dare might make you think so. Harrison Patrick Smith’s one-man effort to bring New York back through electroclash seemed like an answer to a problem that no one could name: Whatever happened to fun? Since his off-color one-off “Girls” hit airwaves in 2022—becoming a viral hit mostly among heatseekers and critics—“indie sleaze” is the neologism on everybody’s lips. In listening to “Girls” or any of the tracks from 2023’s The Sex EP, you could get glimpses of Peaches and LCD Soundsystem and maybe some of their predecessors, like ESG and Liquid Liquid. Smith’s take is decidedly irreverent, leaving audiences oscillating between hating it because the joke is overdetermined or loving it because he can commit to a bit. To close out the summer, The Dare commits to a terrifying bit on his debut full-length, What’s Wrong With New York?—just mere months after approaching fame on Charli xcx’s hit “Guess,” which recently got a facelift with Billie Eilish on the remix.
That his come-up parallels the “Dimes Square” scene is no accident. Months upon months of lockdown, in a city full of young people craving communal experiences in their peak nightlife years, industry executives got creative and capitalized on the “next big thing” when they found a crop of hungry artists with ideas ranging from the absurd to the avant-garde—all of whom were willing to put themselves out there before their projects hit maturation. Scene reports did their best to separate the wheat from the chaff, while critics hastily chose all-in or all-out standpoints. The Dare, as a DJ and as a performer, proved inescapable in the downtown scene, either as a presenter or as a figure whose shadow loomed over any parties of like vibe. In unusually packed dive bars and private events, including fashion shows in Europe, The Dare brushed up his production and lyrical pageantry for What’s Wrong With New York?. The result is a mixed bag of bite-size party anthems and wearisome earworms that provoke even if you’re not looking for provocation.
“Open Up” beckons the listener to let the walls crumble like a turbocharged Morningwood song: “It’s just rock and roll, you won’t die / You can’t spend your whole life inside / You’ve got to open up your eyes / Open your arms / Open your legs.” The Dare gets right to the point: It’s about partying, it’s about sex, it’s about shedding your inhibitions for good. What’s fascinating about the music isn’t that it’s erotic—it would be awful in the bedroom—but the mere suggestion of raunchiness and debauchery can relax the muscles and up the blood flow like a hit of amyl nitrate. Conveniently, it seems like poppers are everywhere now, no longer under the monopsony of gay men. “Girls” makes a reappearance early on, as does “Good Time,” another breakout from The Sex EP that sounds like “Losing My Edge” crossed with 3OH!3—propulsive like a joyride with production that has plenty to offer but lyrics that feel tired. There’s something discouraging about hearing “I’m in the club while you’re online” when too many people are on their phones at the club anyhow.
The Dare is at his best when the jokes he pulls actually go over the top, like on “Perfume.” As he pushes his voice to a near-crack, he sounds like a cartoon caricature of a nerd who suddenly pulls because he’s discovered the power of perfume, his aroma attracting men and women like a fruit pie on a ‘50s window sill. All it takes is $5.99 and everyone will ask, with lust in their eyes, “What’s that smell?” Since the Met Gala, “camp” is egregiously misapplied, and “Perfume” is not campy; it’s something simpler. The underlying electro-rock is cogent and serious, playing against Smith’s characteristic outlandishness.
“All Night,” while showcasing a slightly more fluid production, is similarly absurd: “I wake up at noon, put on both of my shoes / Crawl right back into bed and sleep until the evening / LA to New York, New York to LA / I want more than fame, hope you feel the same / All night.” Smith is serious about the over-romanticized figure of nightlife, and it feels like he knows that’s a funny bind. He might as well take the romantic too far. The stakes get even higher and sillier on closer “You Can Never Go Home,” as Smith urges: “Tonight is all we know / Leave everything behind / Because you can never go home.”
Beneath the bawdy lyrics that are not especially sexy—like “Let’s make a baby / In the Mercedes / You lost the rubber / Let’s make another” on “You’re Invited”—is a rich production rooted in electroclash but covering more ground than The Sex EP could, hinting at why The Dare is a candidate for major-label pop production beyond Charli xcx. While carefully studied (Charli once praised Smith for an “encyclopedic” knowledge of music), Smith is well aware that drawing from an old well requires either reworking the source material into something new or comical levels of pastiche. As The Dare, he arguably leans toward the funny. The problem is that the joke doesn’t always land. The genius, however, is that Smith can send critics on a death spiral of arguing—“that joke didn’t land” met with “you just don’t get it” back and forth until the world implodes, all the while his fans keep dancing. The party will go on whether or not you’re invited.
Devon Chodzin is a Pittsburgh-based critic and urban planner with bylines at Aquarium Drunkard, Stereogum, Bandcamp Daily and more. He lives on Twitter @bigugly.
