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Sometimes the simplest tricks are the hardest to pull off. Take The Dare – the New York producer injects early 00s tropes with a dash of irony and pop suss, but despite an increasingly flood of imitators no one can quite match his suss. Perhaps that’s due to the songwriting – stripped back, sleek, and effective, debut album ‘What’s Wrong With New York?’ is prickish, provocative, and a helluva a lot of fun.
It’s all these factors and more which probably lies behind the enormous queue which greets CLASH on reaching North London’s O2 Forum Kentish Town. It’s cold but half the boys in the queue – and a fair percentage of the girls – are clad in black suits, white shirts, and skinny ties; Dare-fever is well and truly under way, and to be honest we’re here for it.
By the time we reach the top of the stairs the entire venue is pulsing, security desperately trying to control the upper tiers. The Dare is onstage, his shades acting as a shield against the blaring lights, an arc of Marshall amps placed behind him. It’s him and him alone – no band, no guests, just one guy vs the biggest headline crowd he’s ever faced. He’s on purring, preening form immediately, pronouncing the audience to be “soooo seductive” before rattling into another pristine indie-dance banger.
Early single ‘Sex’ is a promiscuous highlight, a heady anthem embraced by a bunch of kids who came out of lockdown eager to swipe right. ‘Perfume’ is incandescent, while ‘I Destroyed Disco’ – “I like music so much,” he says as an intro; “perhaps a little too much” – is buried beneath digital self-immolation.
As much as The Dare revels in surface, however, there’s a sense that a shrewd mind lies behind these productions. Take the choice of cover – ‘I Can’t Escape Myself’ is a top tier moment from cult UK post-punk group The Sound, far from the fashionistas elixir he’s painted as.
With just a solitary album and a pre-blow up EP to his name, it’s time for some curveballs. The Dare throws in “a couple of songs I haven’t put out yet… so if you want them, maybe I will” to let the pace slacken a little, before racing to a finale. ‘Bloodwork’ is interspersed with aspects of his year-defining, chart-demolishing ‘Guess’ remix, while ‘Elevation’ purrs with proto-techno electricity.
With actual, genuine circle pits breaking out in the crowd below, The Dare takes a moment to compose himself offstage before the encore begins. It’s a breathless triptych – punk-like in its brevity, an arc in which the producer spends more time in the crowd than onstage. ‘Movement’ and ‘All Night’ are greeted rapturously, before The Dare stage dives into the crowd during a pulsating rendition of ‘Girls’. Fans pull at his clothes, tearing at his sleek Hedi Slimane suit, ruffling his Mod-ish hair, and ripping off his loafers. It’s a breathless, slightly overawed figure who departs the stage, almost overcome by what he’s created.
As the Gen Z kids spill back out into the night, skinny black ties pulled loose by the scrum, you’re left to reflect on the endearing simplicity of what The Dare has created. You’re drawn back to one moment, with feedback and synthetic sound squealing out of the amps. He turns to the crowd, and says: “I like that song… I don’t have to do anything. And that’s kinda nice.”
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Words: Robin Murray
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