Review: The Dare – What’s Wrong With New York?

The Dare
What’s Wrong with New York
Republic
Street: 09.06
The Dare = LCD Soundsystem + Damon Albarn

It’s the end of BRAT summer, baby and it’s time to keep the party going and act like a recession isn’t making its way over to us on the dancefloor. What better way to turn up than with the artist behind some of your favorite TikTok audios that have wormed their way into your timelines and eardrums? Suit up ladies, gents and everyone in between, it’s coming up, it’s Dare. More specifically, The Dare, with his debut album, What’s Wrong With New York?. 

While you may believe that The Dare is a fresh, up-and-coming face to the music scene thanks to “Guess” name-drop from our lord and savior Charli xcx, The Dare was once Turtlenecked—a solo project he formed while attending Lewis & Clark College. While Turtlenecked was met with acclaim along the Pacific Northwest and online for its polished production, there were criticisms of “insufferable” lyricism. During the pandemic, Harrison Patrick Smith would make self-described “fun and goofy” songs to send to friends as jokes, this would lead to the creation of his musical persona The Dare. “Fun and goofy” is an understatement to say the least, as What’s Wrong With New York? is a blast and a half of a listen despite its far too short 27-minute runtime. 

Starting off strong with the track “Open Up,” The Dare invites you to open yourself up to his gimmick and just feel the music for what it is. “It’s just rock ‘n’ roll, you won’t die / You can’t spend your whole life inside,” The Dare sings as he calls us out for our chronically online, yet miraculously media illiterate, brains. It’s basically his way of saying “touch grass” and not take everything he’s presenting to you so seriously. To quote Everything Everywhere All At Once, “There are no rules,” it’s just music!

While “Girls” is the track that blew The Dare up, there’s plenty of standouts from my initial listen. Tracks like “You’re Invited” that have catchy “recession-era-indie-sleaze-core” lyrics like, “Touch me then say you need me / Fuck me like we were meant to / Be, girl, I got no money, You got no money, we got a good time,” to “I Destroyed Disco” and its clever Calvin Harris reference, are quick to silence any of these “insufferable” lyricism accusations. Even more serious tracks like “Elevation” have amusingly unserious lyrics, reminding us that The Dare is just a character, like, “And then I watch as the memory passes / See your face through these dark sunglasses/ And what I once knew now is just ashes.”  The instrumental on “Movements” is worth the mention alone and the closing track “You Can Never Go Home” could also be considered a standout in its own right. 

Despite all my aforementioned praise, I do think that The Dare’s delivery can be a little repetitive track to track and I can see where the comparison to LCD Soundsystem comes from. Though  I would argue that The Dare is something completely different. I mean, you may have listened to the song on repeat during your most torturous formative years,  but have you ever read the lyrics to “Someone Great” or “Dance Yrself Clean”?  The Dare is not here to do what James Murphy did for a generation. Nor does he intend to be. I would also argue that during my initial listen, the comparison most blatant to me was Damon Albarn during his run fronting Blur. I also don’t totally agree with the internet hype train and its claims that The Dare is going to bring back our beloved (TikTok-coined)  “Indie Sleaze” era of American pop culture. History and its trends (or microtrends) repeat themselves, and with the times we live in, it only makes sense for Gen Z to follow in the steps of its 2008-recession-scarred elders. 

It’s a short sleazy listen that’ll be sure to have at least a little something to tickle your fancy, so why not give it a shot? Can’t hurt to add a little Dare to your life. Whatever, what do you care what I think anyway? As The Dare iconically put it, “What’s a blogger to a rocker”? What’s a SLUG Contributing Writer to The Dare? –Yonni Uribe

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