Brooklyn based musician and DJ Harrison Patrick Smith, also known as The Dare, seemingly appeared out of nowhere. His collaboration with pop queen Charli XCX on her raunchy bonus track, “Guess” and the viral sensation of his break-out single “Girls” put him on the map practically overnight as the poster boy of the indie-sleaze revival and as one of the big new names in music.
The Dare has generated a reputation for creating party bangers with bawdy, cheeky lyrics which have proved as popular as they are controversial. His debut album What’s Wrong With New York? comes at the end of the iconic “brat summer” and acts as a musical rulebook for a new generation of partiers.
In an interview with Zane Lowe, Smith referred to albums as ways for artists to articulate “a way of being” or “aesthetic perspective”. What’s Wrong With New York? perfectly illustrates this as it lays out The Dare’s championing of uninhibited fun and hedonistic enjoyment. The opening track “Open Up” sets this tone immediately with its high energy and characteristically cheeky lyrics such as ‘free your mind and your ass will follow’.
This energy is maintained and even kicked up a notch with “Good Time” which opens with a whoop from Smith and the demand: ‘let’s have some fun tonight!’. Smith boasts that ‘[he’s] in the club while you’re online’, urging people to get off their phones and enjoy themselves freely. “I Destroyed Disco” similarly articulates this anti-internet sentiment as Smith asks ‘what’s a blogger to a rocker, what’s a rocker to The Dare?’ before launching into an almost overwhelming array of pulsing electronic sounds which simulates the feeling of losing yourself in a club.
It would be easy to categorise this album as a collection of simple club hits, but what is exciting about The Dare is how funny and self-aware he is. The song “Perfume” for example, where Smith jokingly boasts: ‘that’s my perfume, it’s $5.99, I spray it in my mouth and the taste is divine’ is unashamedly bizarre and shows him making fun of himself and his lack of glamour.
His hit single “Girls” is also hilarious as he jokes that he likes ‘girl who pregnant’ and ‘girls who give it up for lent’. In trying to make himself seem uncool, The Dare makes himself more cool and his songs end up being so stupid that they’re actually clever. The Dare has often been accused of being a pastiche of early 2000s groups such as LCD Soundsystem but once again, he knows this and uses it to his advantage. In “You Can Never Go Home” for example, he admits that ‘sometimes [he] only sing[s] one note’ and ‘sometimes [he] steal[s] what others wrote’, making fun of his own derivativeness.
The selected singles for the album provided a good teaser for what was to come but something that was surprising was how vulnerable some of the lyrics on the album were. Tracks one to seven largely follow The Dare’s signature style of irreverent, bawdy lyrics backed by pulsing basslines and electronic beats but track eight, “Elevation”, acts as a refreshingly slow ballad reminiscent of indie groups like The Wombats. The Dare’s energy is one of his strengths but after 20 minutes of high octane club hits, a change of pace is welcome. The lyrics are strikingly emotional as Smith acknowledges there’s no escaping love’ and ‘when the elevation is done, there’s no erasing us’, exploring the trials of love and life which plague even the most avid partiers.
The album’s closing track “You Can Never Go Home” is even more honest and vulnerable as Smith admits ‘sometimes I’m laid up like a junkie’ and ‘sometimes I’m close to suicide’, suggesting, yes, he is all for a good party but he’s also not trying to hide the dark side of drugs, alcohol and all-nighters.
What’s Wrong With New York? is an open invitation to fun and debauchery that doesn’t shy away from bawdy lyrics, self-mockery or emotional expression and the combination of these qualities make it a unique piece of work which showcases Smith’s talent as a musician. The Dare has often been criticised for leaning too heavily on the hits of the early 2000s and there are undoubtedly traces of artists such as LCD Soundsystem on this album, but The Dare’s raunchy yet self-aware humour sets him apart from the rich musical history which so clearly inspires him and he proves himself to be a new voice with new things to say. The Dare may not take himself seriously but he certainly takes his work seriously and that is a fine thing.
8/10
