“Send it to The Dare / Yeah, I think he’s with it” — Charli XCX, June 2024
“Upon further review, The Dare is most definitely with it” — Vanyaland, right this second, September 2024
And The Dare has been with it, but it took a Charli XCX bonus track called “Guess” (and subsequent Billie Eilish remix) to get most of the world hip to the New York producer, born Harrison Patrick Smith. The 350 savvy people packing Sonia in Cambridge on Tuesday night (September 10) didn’t need a viral brat summer to draw them Smith’s goofy greatness, recently bolstered by the release of his debut LP What’s Wrong With New York?
For someone embarking on a sold-out headlining tour, the gangly dance-rock deviant had all the swagger of a dude privately playing rock star in his bedroom. And that seriously unserious demeanor made the tour’s opening night damn great.
“It’s just rock and roll / You won’t die / You can’t spend your whole life inside,” Smith belted on apt first song “Open Up” while contorting his wiry frame and signature suit into a number of poses. He spit the lyrics with exaggerated urgency, as if acknowledging that staying inside is all anyone cares to do anymore, lest they are dragged into the costly, noisy inconvenience that is society.
If What’s Wrong With New York? is an argument to GTFO of the house and into the club, then last night’s performance was the crux of Smith’s case: Proof that going out still has the capacity to not suck, and in fact, be quite enjoyable. Particularly when you’re rattling off the licentious “Girls” lyrics, “I like the girls who like to lie that they came / Girls who fuck on the train / Girls who got so much hair on they ass / It clogs the drain” as a community. Wholesome!
Flanked only by lighting rigs that broadcast effects literally warranting an epilepsy warning, Smith trotted through his offbeat catalog, from last year’s Sex EP and a pair of unreleased tracks, to the entirety of What’s Wrong With New York? He sprang into crouches with each salvo of bass punctuating “I Destroyed Disco.” He flubbed the first verse of “Sex” and casually confessed his mistake to the beat, a natural admission alongside the 100 percent real lyric “I might even finish it way too quick.” He did all this with little more than a Korg and a hi-hat, which he periodically hoisted and smashed over the crowd, dispatching clashes of sound like a priest blessing devotees with holy water.
Onstage, Smith is the ghost of indie sleaze past. He is the unpretentious future of nightlife. He is just a regular guy, in a translucent-with-sweat button up (the black jacket came off mid-set), eyes screwed shut in concentration as he regales you with the unconventional merits of “Perfume”: “I spray it my mouth and it tastes just divine.”
“This is your last chance, before you go back to your miserable lives,” Smith warned as he introduced the final handful of songs. The chance to do what, exactly — mosh, down a shot, make out with a stranger — we’ll never know for sure. But his sentiment says it all; outside, your existence is a drag, but on the dance floor, it’s a delight. Over the years, we’ve become accustomed to the reverse being true, but The Dare’s out here successfully hawking shirts and stickers branded with his lyric “I’m in the club while you’re online.”
Ordinarily, a line like that would barely qualify as a flex. But after witnessing what The Dare is capable of in said club, it’s practically a diss to the chronically logged-on. Quoth the chorus of “Girls” — that’s what’s up.
