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alexa, velvet underground, the dare show:
Photos by Alexa
My phone was stolen at the Bruce LaBruce Anti-TIFF party. I wish I could say something deeply out of touch like I am writing this concert review from my iPad, but I have a robust Apple ecosystem and this is straight from my laptop.
This is still not the worst thing that has happened to me this weekend. That was Community Wines. Horrible, sure. Surrounded by a future I am desperate to outrun. Complacent and simple! Lots of Botox and none of it’s preventative. I simultaneously felt horrible about myself (young, drunk, bumming cigs amidst the Othership crowd) but also the best I’ve ever felt—I’ll never be these people! I am young, drunk, and far more ambitious.
People who say comparison is the thief of joy are wrong. You’re just comparing yourself to the wrong people.
Thank God R gave me this platform otherwise I’d have commandeered someone else’s phone, posting through it like a maniac on main.
★★★
I thought I was going to marry The Dare this weekend. I either want to marry my longtime boyfriend at 45 (I’m single) or find my first husband yesterday. Figuring that since I’d interviewed him, I’d have a leg up on all the other sluts at the concert on Friday. Mind you, he brought up marriage to me FIRST! (This is hashed out in the piece; for those interested, it does appear that The Dare is in fact the marrying type.)
The plan was as follows: (1) I interview The Dare, (2) I write my article, (3) the article is published, (4) I tastefully post about my article on my IG story (he is mentioned), (5) The Dare reads my article, (6) he falls in love with my mind, (7) we get dinner at Le Swan (????), (8) we get married, (9) I get a green card, (10) I get that EA job that’s open at New York Mag.
My plan was cut short at step (3). At the time of this writing, our interview hasn’t been published so we have NOT achieved step 6. Isn’t that what everyone wants, though? To be seen? And understood? Editors note: It’s out now, check it out.
Oh yes, the concert. R said she liked the opener. I was mostly confused. I wanted to shake my ass, but it’s hard to do that to a song from Jacques Demy’s French New Wave musical Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1967). I should not be yelling “Have you seen Les Ombrelles De Cherbourg?????” into people’s ears at the Velvet Underground.
The Dare walked right by us, beelining backstage at around 9:30 PM. In my platforms boots, he wasn’t the towering figure I was promised. We waited, crushed up against one another, for The Dare to start. Men in baggy clothes came on stage to thunderous applause only to turn a knob or talk into a microphone. “They’re having technical difficulties,” a friend kept repeating, though he had no more insight than the rest of us.
The crowd was young. I am young, but these kids looked younger than us—maybe God sent me to Community Wines so I could repeat this favour for my millennial counterparts, some sort of karmic Pay It Forward—wearing clothes that looked like costumes, trying on a new identity for a night. Not that different from who we came to see perform.
Prepping for the interview was tedious. Everyone writes some variation of the same thing about him. I had to hold back some of this frustration in the profile; how could someone who makes so much grimy music be subjected to the same buttoned-up press? Like, we get it, he’s a nice and horny music nerd. Nothing like his onstage persona. This tracks when we chatted, polite and bashful, donning his Gucci suit because this is Work. He won’t give too much away. And yet the shock of seeing him “turn it on” for an audience is what ultimately makes this all so appealing. You can really be whoever you want to be. It’s a matter of will. R points out in her album review that who he is doesn’t really matter. I would argue that that is both true and untrue. It both does and it doesn’t.
Eventually, the random men disappeared and The Dare stepped onstage in the dark. Beams of light from his weird set up. It looked like a science experiment (read: academic, not fair). The sound was deafening, seeping through my muscles until it finally shook my bones. I felt like such an asshole, singing along to the songs I’d been listening to privately for a month, but it was beyond my control. The songs are anthemic, all but begging you to thrash around, appearances be damned.
What unfolded over the course of his set was demystifying, but in a way that endeared me to him. Yes, he’s just a guy. But that guy is talented! He knows how to put on a show. He smacks the cymbal and yells into the mic. “I’m soooooo drunk,” he lies to our faces. You just rolled up from a meet and greet at Kops and I know your PR guy Reid keeps you on a tight leash.
He tells us we’re beautiful. We’re sweaty. I’ve lost most of my friends. The crowd smells like Bath & Body Works and BO. These 20 year olds have never left the house before and they don’t know how to act. I’m the only one in the crowd who can sing the first verse to “I Destroyed Disco” because I’ve been listening to the album on repeat alone for the last month.
Eventually, he stops and we leave. We don’t meet. We don’t get engaged. Still looking for a green card. DM if you have any leads.
harry, velvet underground, the dare show:
When the "Guess" remix featuring Billie Eilish came out I knew the chances of getting a ticket were over. Before the song came out Tickets for The Dare’s Velvet Underground show were $20. These prices echo when I saw Flume, Kaytranada and Grimes for $40 in 2013. From that perspective, I slacked off on buying a ticket figuring The Dare would still be indie up until showtime.
I couldn't even buy a ticket after the 1st of August thanks to the virality of that song. I felt like I could handle the disappointment but couldn’t escape the Indie Sleaze oozing through August’s every pore. Its essence lingered under the rainbow lights at JERK.
Von Dutch snarled out of the speakers, possessing these boys and girls rocking low-rise jeans and tiny Tommy Hilfiger tops.
Later that night at Hyperclub, the bass from a remix of "Guess" Ard1n played threatened to crack through the bridge we raved beneath. We hid behind our wraparound shades like vampires once the 6 a.m. sun eclipsed the red glow of the DJ booth. Couldn’t shake the sleaze during a trip to Montreal either. Whether I was served by a bartender with a snakebite piercing at Doubles, or sweating it out in a parking garage with gabber dancers at the Fecal Matter rave: the essence bullied me. Tauntingly saying...
No ticket for you……..
Photo by Alexa
That is until R came into the equation. Throughout our 20-year friendship, they’ve always been closer when it comes to events and this was no different. I was sitting on the chaise in my home office, bathing in the afternoon light coming through the window on the patio door, when they texted me a plan. First, see if our hometown friend S still worked at the venue and if he did ask him to get us on guest list. This was arguably the easiest part because S makes concert magic happen and graciously puts us on (we owe you drinks S!). The second part of finding out what to wear was harder but R’s playful relationship with fashion got them farther than I did.
They already had their black pleated miniskirt picked out but the top option was between a grey ribbed tank or a white button-up with a tie. The latter was eventually chosen because as Avril Lavigne, LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy and those who came before The Dare have shown, that officewear is the most fun to wear to a concert.
The idea of what to wear haunted me throughout the workweek. What I knew for sure was that the look had to emanate sleaze. This clothing trend that clashes 00’s and 10’s aesthetics appears simple but it's the union itself that blows the whistle on its inauthenticity. Or maybe it’s just me. I used to never see the merit in basics or tomboyish clothes. Training my eyes to appreciate the attention to silhouette and craftsmanship that ‘basics’ give you has been an infuriating and extremely exciting challenge for me.
That being said, it’s more challenging to try and crack this code when you only have an hour before showtime and no ideas. After 20 or so minutes of wanting to scream I decided that improvising would be the most homaging thing I could do. The downside of improvising a cream tank with grey board shorts is that I couldn’t prepare for how cold it would be. Not only were goosebumps rippling down my arms and legs from the wind chill but the way everyone on my 505 ride was wearing coats creeped me out. What’s worse: once R and I got inside everyone was in The Dare cosplay.
Photo by Alexa
The anxiety couldn’t stop me from trying to get as close to the stage as we could, practically painting ourselves against the left-most brick wall. Then everything went dark except for a spotlight illuminating Taylor Skye’s bright red hair. Within moments he got the crowd moving with Icicle’s 2010 garage banger ‘Anything’. Most of the audience's cheering came from Skye playing newly appreciated 2010’s hits like Swedish House Mafia’s Greyhound but he also snuck in songs from his project with Georgia Ellery, Jockstrap. What got me and possibly only me screaming was when he dropped the theme from the 1967 musical Les Demoiselles de Rochefort mid-show. This injected the heavy set with the comic relief of yé-yé music. My sing-along was obnoxious, my cowboy boots were clopping loudly on the floor, but I was beaming with joy; this was my movie and selfishly, my moment.
There couldn’t have been a better opener for the oddity that would be The Dare. It’s one thing to study him as a meme (a fan held up their phone to flash ‘STD SOUNDSYSTEM’, another held up a ‘stim’ video of someone cutting soap while watching Family Guy) but his passionate performance was unprecedented.
As strobing fluorescent lights lit up joyous faces a spindly man in office wear stumbled out. He slurred “Sorry to leave you waiting, I’m a little drunk”, practically winking at the sleaze revival he’s spearheading. He then erupted into the air, jumping and whipping the microphone left and right. It was like watching the person you thought couldn’t handle a tenth shot of liquor prove you wrong as they danced on the nearest table. He leant over the edge of the stage and instigated the crowd like a lion tamer. At one point he commanded the audience to sing his lyrics back to him.
Shouting back “I LIKE THE GIRLS WHO DO DRUGS” had the same effect as chanting “CHUG MOTHERFUCKER” at a frat party. Then he grabbed the cymbal and held it over the crowd for people to touch. In my opinion, the energy that filled the room was so electrifying because The Dare really roots himself in a hedonistic, unjudgemental space. He doesn’t care if you have money or a sense of style, he just cares if you can dance and fuck.
Even as an OCD-fuelled paranoiac I couldn’t help but lose myself to the mosh that ensued during the album track ‘Movement’. I brushed cheeks, shoulders and lips with strangers dressed in sweat-drenched cotton. I formed lifelong friendships with women who I knew I’d never see again. A girl wearing a bra over a t-shirt was living for the way R coated their arms in friendship bracelets. She also loved my glasses, which I always felt were ordinary until the office siren trend made reading glasses fodder for the pages of Vogue.
That feeling of togetherness pursued the concertgoers once we spilled onto the street post-show. What was supposed to be a one-and-done night out turned into a six hour afterparty of running into old friends and making new ones.
album review
The Dare. The Suit. The man of electroclash blog house nostalgia. What is electro-sex appeal if not sweating in a YSL-esque suit (apparently his is Gucci) in the middle of the Lower East Side, biting off the panties of some person you just met at a St Marks Place karaoke bar that stands 2 meters away from the apartment building Debbie Harry used to live in in ‘83? In the metaphorical sense of course. That’s what we’re selling here, right?
This album is clearly about NYC, not necessarily a love letter per say, but an ode to a party that has been trapped in 2008. A story about possibly one weekend, beyond the terrible people that ran on a power trip rampant around the city. It’s supposed to be about “sex” or the idea of it, its energy or its state being as a conversation. Sex at night, sex in public, how nightlife intertwines with sex so deviantly that it becomes this “third space”. Public relaxation. “Sex” as an umbrella term rather than just fucking.
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“Sex” is slapping your hands on the club walls and sliding down, “sex” is chasing your friends around the city, “sex” is 160bpm+ at five in the morning, “sex” this grimy, dirty, degenerate behaviour that society will tell is wrong to do. It’s beyond poise and is hedonistic. Maybe, this is what he was going for, but it slightly missed the mark. A lot of this album tries to play on this idea of “sex” and he takes it too literally or it’s too obvious in it’s references. Almost forced rather than organic, too structured.
Instead, sex is a product rather than a feeling or a jovial moment in time. Sex is sold as an album. And, we’re not really sure if it’s really sex, but we’ll figure that out as we go through the 27 minutes. At the end of the day, we’re being sold something… Just to preface, this album, “What’s Wrong With New York?” is not about Brooklyn in any sense; it’s about Manhattan, lower of course. I don’t care if he really isn’t a Dime Sq product to New Yorkers, I’m not a fucking New Yorker, and the majority of his listeners aren’t either.
I think for this, I want to try and avoid the cliche array of comparisons that everyone seems to be making. Yes, it’s LCD Soundsystem-esque, and sure "Perfume" kinda, sorta, maybe sounds like "Disco Infiltrator". There’s also this uncanny comparison to Mika that no one seems to agree with, especially in his tone of voice. Listen to “Love Today”, I feel so strongly about this. I also feel strongly that old-head music journalists need to shut up about The Dare, this music isn't made specifically for you so, of course, you aren't going to like it.
Have you ever mixed ketamine and red wine?
Perfume, my favourite track off the album and by far the best, is what I truly think is “The Dare.” We have this image of the artist, the suit that isn’t steamed and is covered in layers of sweat from screaming into a mic and running around the streets of a busy city. It’s real, it’s authentic, and you can relate to it.
“Perfume” feels exactly like crawling around the hardwood floor of some afters, or a walk-up apartment, where you can hear the sirens of the main street outside. Your hair is sprawled everywhere and the room is spinning, there are no walls just the floor you roll around on. And it’s so cold to the touch. So cold.
But truly, the essence of the song is such; intoxication of the night. It’s an erotic mix of chasing the feeling of yearning and never really wanting it, because once you get it it’s not as appealing anymore. The Dare used this “perfume” as a metaphor, for lust, which is seen throughout his album. But in the more literal sense, it’s pheromones, honey. “Can I sniff your pits?” message on Grindr.
“Something so seductive, but you can’t really tell.”
Photos by Lucy, a look into Toronto's own party scene. We are constantly compared to NYC, jesus, but I beleive we may just be grittier..
It’s what we hoped The Dare would be. What was emulated in “Girls” and “Sex”. The feeling of ripping at your clothing because you’re so sweaty, you’re so high and all you can do is laugh and lick the cold wood floor. It’s cheap living too. “It’s $5.99,” he says, and Genius, ha, tells me it’s $5.99 not $599. This song, in so many ways, is a reflection of the current state of living we’re in; we can’t afford to live, we can’t afford to eat, and we can’t afford to party. Hedonistic degeneracy that grows from feeling like you have control of nothing around you.
“Touch me and say you need me, fuck me like we were meant to be girl, I got no money, you got no money, we got a good time,” he sings in “Good Time”. One thing he does well is reflect that broke-ness throughout his tracks. We’re all broke, let’s fuck? Or no, we’re all broke, let’s just let loose completely and give into our inhibitions. All of it falls in tune with the young, twenty-something, city life of “the struggle”. But instead of promoting a sense of hustle culture, it’s this promotion of living in the now.
Where this all goes to shit and falls flat is this “Indie Sleaze American Dream” he perpetuates throughout his entire album. Much like the OG American Dream that was sold, this one breeds false hope for an Indie Sleaze lifestyle of messy chaotic antics.
The songs, the beats the high-pitched screams don’t deliver the promises he presents.
“I’m in the club while you’re online,” he sings in “Good Time”. The “club” doesn’t seem to exist beyond its online presence, the club he speaks of might just be the internet. As A mentioned to me, it’s really “I’m in the club while I’m online.”
The Dare didn’t create the “Indie Sleaze American Dream” but is a product of it at a time when blogging is back, Instagram is our diaries, being “authentic” and “dirty” is cool and our fashion is an individualistic disaster in a beautiful way.
The zillenial zeitgeist is drenched in revival and nostalgia, hence the major comparison to LCD Soundsystem beyond sound. 2008 and 2024 are incredibly reflective of each other, primarily because of their recession state.
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“The Dare -- New LCD or False Prophet” Reddit thread finds a bunch of old-heads or music enthusiasts dissecting such. I think that a huge crux of The Dare’s persona is having meaningless fun, which is what this current generation is all about. The fun doesn’t have to have a purpose aside from instant gratification and fulfillment. Fun is just, fun.
But like the American Dream, and much of 2006 to 2014, it’s only really built for a small collective of people and for the majority, something they can chase after but never fully be part of. Much like the past, it’s still too white, it might not be as hetero, but it brought back all the inclusionary things that the first iteration of it had. "You’re Invited", my least favourite, is meant to be this anthem where he screams “Come be part of my world.” But that statement is empty. The invitation has no address, no date and no way of you knowing anything about the party you’re going to.
“You’re invited, you’re invited…” Are we really though?
At most, you’re invited to watch. Watch the “coolest” people in the city live their lives. You see, the past decade has been a huge time where exclusivity has been at the forefront of culture. From art to nightlife, it’s been a buzzword in the community. I fear we’ve come to a point, in the horseshoe, where inclusivity is now in.
People want to gatekeep more, the party may be invite-only, and if not, it’s going to cost you an arm and leg to get there. It does have a lot to do with the hyper-online world we live in, and wanting something special for ourselves. But the turn left went right, and we soon began to show the world what we have and what they could never touch. The Indie Sleaze era was very much that, and alongside the metallic booty shorts and graphic tees with words on them comes the side-eye look of “Who are you?”
While saying this, it’s funny when you watch the music video. I don’t want to be invited to that party. It’s full of white straight-looking people that vape indoors. Why can they vape indoors but I can’t light a fucking smoke? For a moment, it was like the veil was lifted and we were shown what these parties really look like.
The music video was missing the raunchy behaviour we saw in "Girls". It was curated outside of the “fuck you, fuck me” attitude that "Girls" had. What brought him success was exactly that. The music got too comfortable, perhaps from the success of "Girls". Or maybe the party was never that great in the first place, and we were sold a false image.
Photo by Alexa
Listen, I don’t care who The Dare fucks, I don’t really care who you fuck either. I really don’t want to know, and it's none of my fucking business. With that being said, The Dare does have this allure that contradicts how we viewed “rock stars” of the past. While in the past it was cool if we knew everything about a rockstar's personal and sex life, now it’s more alluring if we don’t. Again, hyper digital age of knowing too much about someone. We don’t know who he actually is, just who he sells to us. We don’t know who he “fucks”. We don’t know a lot about him personally I suppose.
Think about it like this. Sex, much of which is part of his album, is the last intimate thing we can learn about each other. A person becomes almost so much more alluring when we don’t know anything about their sex life. Once we do, the allure falls and we lose that mystery. Which is kind of fucked when you think about it. It’s the one thing, for most of the world, that can’t be fully found online. Maybe even the last of the “word of mouth” method. While he sings about sex, it isn’t about him and his life. It’s about the world around him that he wants to build, like an Indie Sleaze cult of heathenistic party monsters that get off to electroclash. Jerad Leto for the local chain smoker in a fur.
Again, whether he’s aware of this or not doesn’t matter. The irony of the person he puts on might be planned, but again it doesn’t matter. Being self-aware doesn’t mean anything unless something comes out of it. “The Suit” is its own entity too, and maybe one day as he stands in front of his closet, in a white tee and trousers, he’ll pour gasoline all over it and set it on fire. Taking the whole building down with it.
I feel mean. I don’t think this album is bad in any sense, I think there are truly some great tracks here beyond Perfume. “You Can Never Go Home” is one of them. There’s a sense of wind in the song through the static screeching you hear, that’s a good thing. It’s what crying feels like, you know when you don’t want to leave but you know you have to go. It’s, again, yearning. I think this is one of the best songs—ONE OF—to come in the past few years about New York.
From my perspective, it’s this brutal moment of not letting go of a city that is full of so much. There is an immense heartbreak leaving New York, personally speaking. I don’t ever see myself living there yet I dream about it so often.
“So don’t look back tonight, tonight is all we know, leave everything behind, cus you can never go home,” he sings.
I remember last year, and I tell everyone this stupid story, but I called J and cried to her about not wanting to leave. “What if I just stay and work here and just don’t leave,” I said crying into the phone. I racked up a huge bill after that call. S looked at flights with me so I could stay longer, but eventually, reality sits in and you have to accept it. I mean you don’t, but that’s what I did. I also had 4 hours of sleep within like three days. While The Dare gets to leave his apartment and thinks this song is about a party, much like any other New Yorker who shares his lifestyle, those who don’t listen to it on their last night with their forehead pressed to the back of the front seat of the cab. That’s at least how I feel about it, anyway.
I truly think there is good in this album. I think it’s better than some shit that comes out of New York in the past couple of years, but it can be better. It’s hard to sell what's really happening currently in your city to the masses, that's why underground really worked well…well, underground. Anyways, Harrison, it was great, I listen to it a lot regardless of how I feel about it. I think you are talented and have done something somewhat revolutionary in your own space, even though it’s part of revival culture.
“What’s a blogger to a rocker, what’s a rocker to The Dare,” well, you got me there.
I’m going to go listen to “I Destroyed Disco” now.
See you later.