![Live Review: The Dare – Belgrave Music Hall, Leeds [21st November 2024]](https://www.soundspheremag.com/wp-content/migration/images/stories/20241121_211557-scaled.jpg)
Words: Callie Petch
OK, let’s get this out of the way: “STD Soundsystem.” Yes, ha ha, very clever, good pun. From the second that Harrison Patrick Smith rebranded himself as The Dare, he has been dogged by comparisons to and accusations of ripping off James Murphy & LCD Soundsystem. If you have heard of The Dare for non-Charli XCX reasons over the past year, it’s probably been for that charge; a tag so strong the LCD subreddit has had to ban memes about it. As a fan of both artists (LCD being one of my all-time favourites), and also a person with working ears, this baffles me. Sure, both Smith and Murphy got their start as New York City indie kids who each later had revelations about the power of dance music which changed their entire creative trajectories, both wear suits on-stage, and there’s that one Lol Tolhurst remix Smith did where the brief was intentionally ‘make the James Murphy-guesting song sound more like LCD,’ but that’s pretty much it in terms of real similarities! Murphy didn’t even wear a suit until late in the Sound of Silver era and hasn’t at all since reactivating the project!
As musicians, aside from “Movement” – which, ironically, bites “Thrills” off of LCD’s self-titled rather than the song with the same name – the pair have nothing in common! Even in the band’s earliest days, LCD were writing lengthy, groove-driven, and often emotional songs about the fear of aging, cultural changes in the New York scene, and seeing your world through the lens of classic rock musicians gone by. Songs that could be funny and laced with irony, delivered with a bit of a punk sneer, but just as frequently ache with sincere love and insecurity, demonstrating profound insight in between the ass-shaking rides. The Dare, meanwhile, has exclusively made short, sharp, stupid songs about fucking, being horny, taking shit-tonnes of drugs, and being horny whilst taking shit-tonnes of drugs during fucking. His tracks are fuelled on electroclash DNA which has almost no time for groove when they could much rather body speakers with brute force and dumb-ass hooks before drunkenly passing out overhanging the nearby window within three minutes. LCD prizes analogue instruments and a warm-fidelity recording; The Dare is heavily digitised and enjoys the minor-abrasion of Ed Banger.
When I read an article/post about The Dare which compares him to LCD Soundsystem or uses “STD Soundsystem,” I can only assume that said person’s entire knowledge of LCD is “Daft Punk is Playing at My House” or is too in love with an above-average pun to look any deeper. This is a hill I shall apparently die on lonely and mad and insane, given that my protestations to other music nerds have been met with variations on “lol, are you that fuckin’ stupid?” But I’m adamant: The Dare is nothing like LCD Soundsystem.
Which is not to say that the entire Dare project hasn’t been a series of blatant rip-offs stapled together for our early-00s indie sleaze nostalgia wave. Smith would be the first to admit that; recent album closer “You Can Never Go Home” even features the line “yeah, sometimes I steal what others wrote.” I hear a shit-load of The Rapture, specifically Pieces of the People We Love, the album they pointedly didn’t make with The DFA. I hear some of Fischerspooner and early Felix da Housecat in the bratty electro-punk irreverence. I hear a smidge of Does It Offend You, Yeah?’s “We Are Rockstars” in the synths on “Good Time” and “Sex.”
Most of all, I hear Calvin Harris. Not big-tent EDM superstar DJ hit-maker Calvin Harris, but the weedy try-hard Calvin Harris from 2007 who, admittedly, was trying to dumb down James Murphy’s cool for a transatlantic equivalent. A big novelty electroclash single about how the narrator is so comically horny and charismatic that he can get with literally any woman he wants, no preferences, called “Girls” which broke him through to an audience equally enamoured and infuriated by its brazen dumbness; am I talking about Harris or Harrison? Both men aimed for a projected self-image of masculine coolness, of not taking this whole musicmaking thing all that seriously so you shouldn’t either, yet landed at kinda dorky. Harris’ debut album was called I Created Disco; The Dare has a song called “I Destroyed Disco.” The prosecution rests, your honour.
I realise this so far reads like a gigantic roast of The Dare – those rip-off claims aren’t exactly the most flattering, and my defence against “STD Soundsystem” amounts to “he’s not capable of that level of musical complexity and emotional insight!” So, let me state this for the record: I like The Dare. Dumb fun has its value and the 12 songs which currently make up his recorded output, split across his 2023 The Sex EP and 2024 debut full-length What’s Wrong With New York?, are both very dumb and very fun. The man knows his way around a sticky-ass hook, his production is ultra-punchy with bottoming drops which are joyous to fling yourself around to, and whilst the debauchery is about as convincing as a middle school principal during a D.A.R.E. presentation there is still something charming in its cartoonishness. For all the unmistakeable swipes from prior artists, the infrequent lapses from simplistic to just plain-underwriting, and unashamed obnoxiousness, The Dare has already written way more genuinely good songs than Calvin Harris did at this point in his career, and that’s before we get to the Charli XCX connection.
Photo by Callie Petch.
All to say, I consider myself lucky to get into this headline show at Leeds’ Belgrave Music Hall as Press, having previously tried to get tickets as a paying fan only for all 300 to sell out within seconds of becoming available. TikTok virality for initial singles “Girls” and “Good Time,” plus co-producing the BRAT highlight “Guess,” goes a long way. Right outside around the building, to be precise. I arrive about 10 minutes after doors open and the queue is still at the rear of Belgrave; an alien sight to myself and multiple people who wander by bemused at how busy the combination venue/bar is tonight. The crowd is overwhelmingly youthful – I don’t think I clock a single person who looks over 30 in the venue all show – several in full-on Dare cosplay (suit and tie and black sunglasses), and all BRAT as fuck. Opening DJ Adult DVD (yes that really is his name) drops the shygirl remix of “365” during his set and the room practically explodes for the following two minutes, so it seems apparent what most drew them here.
Then again, maybe not. The big question for any and all acts who get their breakthrough via TikTok is ‘how long can they make that fame last?’ Sure, The Dare has a couple of viral moments and a Charli XCX namecheck, but does that an hour-long headline set make? This crowd answers that conundrum by going utterly apeshit for almost every single song The Dare has currently released. Taking the stage to a scene-setting Kavinsky-esque intro – midi controller stage-right, synthesiser stage-left to add some additional burbles, and Chekov’s crash cymbal at stage-rear which goes unremarked upon – the instant Smith launches into the first line of “Open Up,” he’s almost drowned-out by the crowd yelling it back. “Good Time” straight afterwards has the sardine-packed floor pogoing in delirium, and the bass towards the end of “Sex” feels like it’s punching a Johnny Cage fist-sized hole in my chest.
Any queries about authenticity, originality, dumbness, long-term prospects, and other such music nerd navel-gazing are punted to the morning-after hangover during this opening run. Who, frankly, gives a flying fuck when we’re all having this much motherfucking fun? I’ve been to hardcore shows with less crowd energy than this; phones are an infrequent but brief presence, their owners electing to get a few quick snaps and vids before going back to feeling the music. A moshpit opens up during “I Destroyed Disco,” which Smith remarks from the stage with drunken glee is the first time that’s happened to him; his career total will quintuple before the night’s over. In fact, the crowd energy is so raucous that “Perfume” has to be aborted after the second chorus due to the midi controller coming disconnected from its platform. After a few minutes and a quick fix, “Disco” gets to its first chorus before the same thing happens again. Smith deduces that he and his technical assistant should just tape it down to the stand before moving forward, a tactic which sees the rest of the evening go off without a hitch.
Pretty much the only time that the energy slows down a touch is mid-set when, in order to beef up the length closer to the hour mark, Smith breaks out two unreleased songs and a cover. Even then, the slightly muted crowd response seems more a case of unfamiliarity than dissatisfaction at what’s being played; the drops still see the pit work as an ever-widening sieve filtering out the exhausted. For me, these are when the music nerd navel-gazing hangover starts to creep back in. An electro-fied cover of The Sound’s “I Can’t Escape Myself” may establish Smith’s bona fides as a serious lover of music rather than a meathead jokester, but its presence also throws into starker light the knuckle-dragging simplicity of his own songwriting and lyricism right now. “Lights, Camera, Action!” isn’t even the best new song about fucking called “Lights, Camera, Action” I’ve heard in the last three months, though its drunken lurches into three different tempos during the outro is amusing. Best of the lot is “Freaky//Right” which adds some big beat to The Dare’s DNA, a combination that makes exactly as much sense in execution as it does on paper.
Photo by Callie Petch.
Before long, we’re back on familiar ground. “Bloodwork,” arguably his best song, already has the crowd jumping before he pulls the cheeky but nonetheless effective move of layering in some vocal snippets from “Guess.” “Elevation,” the one rest point on the album – “you gotta have one love song, even if you’re The Dare” he offers by way of explanation – still sees way more people around me singing along than I would’ve expected. The †-era Justice chaos blasts on “Movement” reignite the party something fierce, whilst “All Night” time-warps everybody back to their indie disco of choice in 2008 with the pit now big enough to swallow up near-enough the entire room and Chekov’s crash cymbal whaled on during the outro. If it weren’t for “Girls” coming straight afterwards, I would’ve assumed that “All Night” was the big hit everybody was here for, the sheer communal ecstasy shared in that chorus even making one guy crowdsurf his way to the stage. (Despite Smith’s palpable excitement at the prospect, security usher the guy off before he could dive back into the crowd.) But “Girls” does come straight afterwards and I honestly couldn’t tell you if I heard Smith sing a single line of it with everyone else taking care of lead duties for him.
So, where does that leave us, besides hopefully retiring STD Soundsystem for good? As sweaty and fun as the night has been, I do stumble back out into the freezing Leeds streets with some potential red flags regarding The Dare’s future. It’s a show heavily reliant on the crowd for the energy, Smith isn’t the most dynamic performer, he still looks more like a cosplaying doofus when swigging alcohol from the bottle rather than legit New York cool, and the setlist filler feels just like that. And yet… there’s something in the air of that room tonight. A sensation that maybe, just maybe, The Dare could be sticking around for a while. You don’t get people selling out your shows in seconds, rocking up to them mimicking your look, singing back album cuts, and dancing their asses off to wholly-new numbers they may never hear again just for TikTok memes or because the current It Girl says you’re with it. There’s something more here. Something which overrides all common sense and reservations, an indicator that The Dare could pull a Confidence Man and last for the long-haul.
Maybe I should stop overthinking it and just open up.
