Producer of the title Guess Charli XCX and Billie Eilish’s favorite golden boy of New York clubbers, The Dare has been on a meteoric rise since he resurrected 2000s rock by enhancing it with electroclash and dance-punk. But isn’t this resolutely cool brat actually a big imposter?
The album cover What’s Wrong with New York (2024) de The Dare.
The Dare, New York’s new bad boy
Some night owls exhibit Harrison Smith as the new essential figure of clubbing. Others, even more enthusiastic, praise him to the skies: the one nicknamed “The Dare” resurrects New York rock from the late 2000s. You’d think the guy would turn any small party into an ultra-trendy Manhattan party…
At 28, this Los Angeles native with a minimalist aesthetic has bet everything on the eternal black suit and tie, on irreverent verses, on a few interview sallies and on an angelic face of new face highly prized by fashion magazines.
One year after the release of The Sex EP (2023), the first album of four tracks with an evocative title, The Dare is today defending its first studio album: What’s Wrong with New York. Twenty-seven minutes of electroclash and dance-punk style LCD Soundsytem or Fisherspoonerwhose devastating new wave and synthpop flights had ruffled the feathers of the arty scene of the Big Apple. As a good golden boy, the musician is already making the crowds swoon.
But when the varnish flakes, what’s really left underneath? Not much, unfortunately. Because the transgressions of the one everyone is fighting over actually burst forth like salvos of blank bullets. His cool is fabricated from scratch and his record, conceived as a substitute for what was best fifteen years ago, appears as explosive as it is redundant. The effectiveness of a placebo.
You’re Invited (2024) de The Dare.
The meteoric rise of the new icon of the indie sleaze movement
After a brief stint under the pseudonym Turtleneckedwhich the Discogs website described in 2015 as “an indie rock with a zigzag structure and wacky lyricism,” Harrison Smith lands behind the decks at private partiesHedi Slimane. He immediately initials each page of the contract handed to him by Republic Records, the influential label of Drake, Taylor Swift, The Weeknd, Nicki Minaj or Ariana Grande. Carried by the pieces Girls et Good Time, his prophetic 2023 EP unveils an evocative cover: two anonymous couples mime intercourse… while keeping their clothes on. Obscenity has its limits.
Because its squeaky electronic pop could just as easily debaucher aristocrats as it could feature on the soundtrack of a football video game. FIFA, The Dare has become the nostalgic reincarnation of indie sleaze: the 2010s party-going ethos whose icons remain Hedi Slimane, Kate Moss or Pete Doherty. Without knowing it, the producer has acted on the return of an era that we thought was over, the one where models with emaciated faces harangued the crowd from the podium of the most fashionable club of the moment… and we found it chic.
In his defense, Harrison Smith makes no secret of it: “Electroclash and dance-punk represent a lot of my personal ideals when it comes to music. It should be fun, dangerous, somewhat punk and primitive, but still tasteful and elegant.”
The piece Guess (2024) by Charli XCX and Billie Eilish.
Guess, The Dare’s collaboration with Charli XCX and Billie Eilish
The Dare’s licentious remarks, declaimed in a nonchalant voice throughout his album, may have facilitated his meteoric rise: “I like girls who make love, but I love girls who like to fuck. […] Girls who fuck on the train. Girls who got so much hair on they ass, it clogs the drain…“Especially since it continued the trend of brat summer – aesthetic of the scruffy brat, recently popularized by the singer Charli XCX –, by producing the title Guess of the latter, in collaboration with the superstar Billie Eilish. He also makes a brief appearance in the clip directed by Aidan Zamir and released at the end of summer.
The Dare’s resolutely cool and ultra-cinematic music is, ultimately, not very erotic. His records offer pieces that one would think one had already heard, like Perfume or of Movement, excerpts from his first album. A beautiful recipe composed of effective refrains underlined by sticky bass. We obviously feel the influence of LCD Soundsystem in these ardent anthems, except that here, they were concocted exclusively to fuel the fervor of New York’s underground clubs.
“What I do is not that complicated, he recognizes. It’s all about energy. It’s about giving people permission to have a good time.”Already heard before or elsewhere, The Dare’s compositions exclude any experimentation in favor of what works.
What’s Wrong With New York? (2024) by The Dare, available.
