The Dare - What’s Wrong With New York? 

Teaming up with Charli xcx for ‘BRAT’ bonustrack ‘Guess’ (and its subsequent Billie Eilish remix) was an inspired move on the part of The Dare. Where certain criticisms of last year’s introductory EP ‘The Sex’ accused the US artist of aiming for transgression and missing the mark, electroclash revival record ‘What’s Wrong With New York?’ has all the too-cool-for-school irreverence and ecstasy of Charli’s clubby project. It’s another hedonistic pop bible for disillusioned ne’er-do-wells with a penchant for bumps and lines – albeit one less for coquettish IT-girls than metrosexual lotharios. Coming at the end of BRAT summer, The Dare’s debut intercepts the baton perfectly.

Across the record, Harrison Patrick Smith – a scuzzy pied piper in a nondescript suit that comes on like an indie sleaze Alex Turner – wanders Dimes Square: New York’s post-ironic, lockdown-refuting cultural hub where everything’s too serious and nothing matters, but like, it’s not, and it does actually. His brand of party hit is a fashionably deadpan rager; a careless, indifferent, post-Covid middle finger where hyper-sexuality and recreational drug use mask an underbelly death wish and indulgent nihilism. Smith doesn’t shy away from acknowledging it, either. See the sordid, Metro Station / 3OH!3-inspired ‘Good Time’, where momentary intimacy acts as a distraction from repressed pain. “I might start a fight / ‘Cause we’re all on the brink of suicide,” he shouts, instructing: “Touch me / Then say you need me / Fuck me / Like we were meant to be.” 

Although suicidal ideation runs rampant beneath the record’s escapism – see the unrelenting, industrial dance of ‘I Destroyed Disco’ – there is, paradoxically, hope at the party. On the MGMT-style wiryelectronic cut ‘All Night’, he comforts his anxious cohort: “If you’re feeling scared / Know they’re only tears / You will be alright / We can feel alive / All night.” This confident debut is fully loaded with post-millennium cultural references – there’s even a nod to Coldplay-esque post-Britpop on ‘Elevation’. At times, you could be forgiven for thinking Smith’s a Brit abroad: as much as the spirit of LCD Soundsystem looms large, his debut also conjures the rabble rousing of early Blur through a Peaches-meets-xcx lens. As a whole, ‘What’s Wrong With New York?’ is a beaming and brilliant moment for both The Dare and its inspired take on historical noughties pop. It may not be transgressive, but it’s ingeniously timed for an audience hungry for stylish and nostalgic catharsis.