Album Review: The Dare - 'What's Wrong With New York?'
With social media ablaze from the recent craze surrounding The Dare, fans are more than ready to absorb every ounce of his highly anticipated album, ‘What’s Wrong With New York?’.
Having only had three official releases under the name of The Dare, Harrison Patrick Smith has impressively rocketed his way into limelight. A current career buzz has been producing Charli XCX’s track ‘Guess’, as well as the version featuring Billie Eilish, who was recently labelled No.1 artist on Spotify. With a clear knack for both creating and producing music, The Dare is well on his way to world fame.
His new album, titled ‘What’s Wrong With New York?’, is a decently sized 10-track piece, coming in at a short and sweet 25 minutes.
The first song from the LP is aptly named ‘Open Up’ - although the lyrics give a different meaning than first thought - not just an opening song for an album! As always, The Dare has nailed an electronic, funky beat that is undeniably catchy. His punky, laid-back attitude of his voice gives an immediate promise for the rest of the album as one to throw yourself around and carelessly dance to. The chanting style of the chorus, ‘Open up your eyes / Open your arms / Open your legs / Just open up’ is definitely one to be shouted by thousands of eager fans at a concert. With the buzzing of faulty connections to amplifiers leading us out of the song, it guides us nicely into the next track, ‘Good Time’, which has a similar sound featured in the intro.
‘Good Time’ feels more disorientating with a variety of crunchy humming bass notes and high-pitched synth-like noises, fitting perfectly with his conversation-like vocals in the chorus and taking on an 80’s arcade game influence around the 1:30 mark. ‘Good Time’ is the first of the trio that were released as singles prior to the album release, as tracks ‘Perfume’ and ‘Girls’ are up next. ‘Perfume’ keeps the playful funk at the forefront whilst ‘Girls’ appears to be the most iconic track of the album, having amounted to nearly 17 million streams on Spotify alone and becoming a trending sound across social media. In this track The Dare unapologetically announces his love to women in quite literally every way you could possibly think of.
Venturing into the halfway mark, ‘I Destroyed Disco’ showcases an out of this world sound with a robotic/alien-like chanting of the song title throughout. With tempos building up the anticipation at 1:35 onwards, the following noise is bound to be an assault on the senses when hearing it live.
Track 6 is ‘You’re Invited’, which follows on from The Dare’s previous single release ‘Perfume’ which debuted last month alongside a video directed by Nick Harwood. After a hefty dose of groovy bass and guitar, next up is ‘All Night’ - which offers an alternative vibe than before, while still maintaining the easily recognisable, laid-back electronic tone. Having headlined legendary DJ sets, soundtracked parties for brands such as Gucci, and shared stages and collaborated with the likes of Charli XCX, Yves Tumor, and Water From Your Eyes, it’s a no-brainer that The Dare has been able to master his signature sound.
‘Elevation’ continues the deviation from the usual, appearing more heart-wrenching and cinematic than any of the other tracks. Paired with the next track ‘Movement’, ‘Elevation’ makes it feel even more pacey and energetic than it already is. The subtle shouting of ‘Movement! Movement! Movement!’ beneath the backing track gives the iconic slightly insane feeling that The Dare puts into all of his songs
Finishing off nicely is 10th track ‘You Can Never Go Home’. This poses as not only a great close for an album, but also a concert setlist, as it appears many of Harrison Smith’s die-hard fans would be more than happy to ‘never go home’ and want to dance the night away with a whole lot more of The Dare’s songs. Although slightly slower than other tracks featured on the album, it’s still got an energetic kick with whining guitars and crunchy synths. The sober, stand-alone bright piano at the end of the track offers a final farewell to a high-energy, dance-packed album.
With Harrison Smith climbing the ranks of the music industry seemingly with ease, it’s clear that this is only the start of many more releases under the name of The Dare.
In the words of GQ Magazine: “Everybody wants a piece of The Dare” – and now, you can, with ‘What’s Wrong With New York?’
Words by Cameron Cookson
