In Scenester, we spotlight the coolest shows, parties, and events in the City and beyond. It's like you're there, but you don't even have to get dressed. Want us to stop by? Contact Joshua at joshua@gazetteer.co.
I don’t know if the phenomenon known as “indie sleaze” — a recent nostalgia for late-aughts dirtbag hipster culture, and the sex, debauchery, and club music that it entailed — really, truly exists outside of Condé Nast publications, Twitter-slash-Reddit discourse, and a handful of New York City neighborhoods.
But no matter. On Thursday, I went to the New Parish in Oakland to catch king-of-the-maybe-made-up-trend The Dare on his The Dare Does the U.S. tour (cheeky!), to suffer through the hype for your reading pleasure.
The Dare is the working moniker of Harrison Patrick Smith, a 28-year-old New York transplant with an affinity for slim-fit suiting and indoor sunglasses. The pitch: Smith started out as a substitute teacher who made fey indie pop under the name Turtlenecked. Then, sometime in 2022, he pivoted to DJing a buzzy party called Freakquencies, which he’s bringing to San Francisco this weekend for a Portola afterparty. That same year, he put out a very good song called "Girls.” And earlier this year, he snagged a well-timed production credit on Charli XCX’s “Guess,” easily the best thing he’s ever done.
The crowd at the New Parish split into three age brackets: The millennials looking to relive their early-20s heyday; the zillennial set — yours truly included — who were too young to actually party at the McKibbin Dorms, but were old enough to see the mythology of NYC nightlife form on Tumblr and in Vice; and, of course, the Gen Z’ers, nursing sodas while dressed in their best late-2000s cosplay.
The kids seem the most eager to bring indie sleaze back for real. I chatted briefly with three Berkeley students in perfectly torn-up flare jeans on our way to the gig; they seemed stoked to dance. When they walked into the venue, the bouncers shouted out, “Three under-21s!” — obviously not the first time they’d made the call that night.
Scattered throughout the crowd were a bunch of dudes trying to emulate The Dare’s button-downs and ties; they looked more like they’d gotten lost on their way to a bar mitzvah. Otherwise, the aesthetic of the evening was late-aughts fashion retrofitted for Gen Z taste: a lot of leather and off-one-shoulder tops, jorts and torn tights, baby-doll tees and shirts with phrases like “in my slut era.” I overheard a young woman tell her friend that she just wanted to dance; she’d busted out a vintage dress from her mom for the night. I half-expected to see a photog taking overexposed club pictures for Lastnightsparty.
The Dare himself was a consummate performer, all practiced swagger and nonchalance. With his mod-era hair and perfectly disheveled suit, he cut a figure not entirely dissimilar to Paul Weller at the CBGB. He hit all the rockstar poses like clockwork. He threw the mic around ever so casually. He fiddled on the synths and smacked the hi-hats around. During “You’re Invited,” he lit a cigarette a fan handed to him, then seconds later sang about taking a smoke break. He grabbed the mic stand and extended it, mic-out, to the crowd for a singalong during “Perfume”.
“It’s not a Dare show unless I almost fall,” he joked early into the set.
The Dare’s songs sound better live than they do recorded, which makes sense: Club music is better in a club, with strobe lights and a crowd fist-pumping in thrall. He doesn’t so much sing as do the sprechgesang sing-talk thing, which does make it easy to join in. The highs on tape are higher IRL: “All Night,” a solid electro-pop confection on record, turned into a total romp, as everyone chanted the “New York to LA” hook in unison. The bratty, braggadocio-filled “I Destroyed Disco” sounded rather convincing when you heard his pitch in person; a San Francisco name-drop on the track got requisite cheers. And, of course, “Girls” is irresistibly fun, doubly so live.
But when the tempo dropped, his charms didn’t quite carry over. His voice, sneering and self-assured on the party cuts, strained a bit without the studio fuzz when he was crooning earnestly on a song like “Elevation” — a simp-y number where the central metaphor is that he’s coming down from the high of something. (That something is not drugs; it is a crush on a beautiful woman.)
By the end, I came away focused on the elephant in the room: The Dare’s brief discography, even live, sounds like a hodgepodge of other, much more interesting artists of the era he’s cribbing from. Take a cup of LCD Soundsystem, a spoonful of “We Are Your Friends,” and sprinkle in a few electroclash and bloghouse MP3s to taste, and you’ve got him.
But the problem with leaning so heavily on nostalgia is it can never quite live up to the original. The crowd may have been singing and jumping along to a fair share of the tracks, but, from my vantage point, nobody really lost themselves, or even got especially sweaty. Most people were too busy nursing Pacificos and hitting their vapes. It maybe didn’t help that it was an all-ages gig.
After the finale, everyone dutifully filed out; the bouncers didn’t have to untangle any mollied-out couples from the corners, or shephard any worse-for-wear stragglers into a cab. Maybe it’s just a skill issue — after all, I booked it straight home to write this dispatch. But when I looked at my watch, I had to wonder: Is it really a party if it ends at 10 p.m. sharp?
