By Aditi Hrisheekesh, Co-Deputy Music Editor
Donned in his signature suit and sunnies, The Dare (Harrison Patrick Smith) steps onto the stage. He brings with him a sort of curated nonchalance (which is a little oxymoronic): cool yet calculated, effortless but entirely constructed.
Often pinned as someone who is resurrecting indie sleaze, his soundscape is reminiscent, recalling an age of bloghouse and the remnants of the early internet – think MySpace and chatrooms. He bends this nostalgic past with the hyper-digital lens of today’s technology, spitting out gritty lyrics amidst flamboyant lighting – 'I'm in the city while you're online'.
The crowd is wired and Marble Factory is brimming as he proceeds to perform his 2024 album What’s Wrong with New York in all its hedonistic entirety. He launches into ‘Open Up’ and the dancefloor might as well have exploded. The set was short and sweet – although I don’t know if ‘sweet’ is the right word – if anything, the songs are sharp and rough around the edges.
Heralding a new age, Smith is often compared to the precursors of the indie sleaze post-punk revival, like LCD Soundsystem or Calvin Harris’s earlier works – it’s as if he’s crawled straight out of an American Apparel advert circa 2008.
‘Bloodwork’ plays, followed by 'Elevation', and the lighting fittingly turns a lurid red – all strobe-lights and pulsing beats that feel like a hallucination in all its surrealness. Somewhere, someplace, there is a dimly lit bedroom with a Pulp Fiction poster plastered on the wall, and a teenager has listened to the album and decided that indie sleaze is their entire personality (with definitely the whole timeless born in the wrong generation attitude, yearning to experience 2000s nightlife).
'Good Time’ (a personal favourite) plays – a sleazy, tongue-in-cheek ode to debauchery. It encapsulates the essence of the early hours of a party, the agonising walk home in biting cold, the next day's debilitating hangxiety as you slowly realise you’ve somehow lost both your debit card and house keys in one night.
Smith bows down to nightlife hedonism, with songs so self-indulgent and stupidly catchy. He projects instrumentation that feels like it’s been lifted from the skeleton of a long-lost Simian Mobile Disco track and revived for today’s new generation of club-goers and lovers of electronica.
‘I Destroyed Disco’ comes on, lyrics cocky and obnoxious but definitely fun, a salute to the legendary Calvin Harris's 'I Created Disco'. It’s electronic but not polished, dance-punk but not rock – more about the aesthetic of chaos rather than actual destruction.
All rubber-band basslines, they are dirty, they are punchy. Strobe lights slice the air, like it's embodying the gritty insides of a Vice magazine photoshoot.
And then the inevitable – ‘Girls’ drops and the crowd is feral. In some sort of poetic moment of exhilarating madness, Smith face-plants onto the dancefloor during a failed crowd surf (the internet, naturally, has immortalised this epic moment). I guess his 'Elevation' was not 'done'. From my vantage point, it was as if he had simply disappeared and then suddenly recalibrated, retaining all his wild energy – a true love-letter to indie sleaze anarchy.
Featured Image: Aditi HrisheekeshWhat's your favourite song from the album?
