When Harrison Patrick Smith hops on our Zoom call, he's wearing a black blazer, a white T-shirt, and big wired headphones. This comes as no surprise. It's a more casual riff on the uniform he's popularized as the Dare: Gucci suit, crisp white shirt, thin black tie. But I'm shocked when he reveals that he only has the one suit.
The blazer he's donning this morning is the part of the suit he wears to DJ Freakquencies, the party he hosts at Home Sweet Home, a dive bar in New York. It's the same suit he sweats in on stage, writhing on the floor while crooning into the mic. And it's the same suit in which we glimpse flashes of Smith making out with a model against the wall in the music video for Charli XCX's "Guess," a song which he also produced. For the amount of times he's worn it, his cost per wear must be in cents (who cares, it was a gift). But his dry cleaning fees must be outrageous.
"There's a myriad of forces that have locked me into this one suit. It's complicated. There will be more, but right now there's just one," he says, somewhat conspiratorially, though he's not conspiring with me. After all, as he sings on his recently released debut record, What's Wrong with New York?: "What's a blogger to a rocker? / What's a rocker to the Dare?"
Many articles about the Dare echo one another: he's brash on stage, but demure in real life with a quiet confidence. Much of this is true — and Toronto fans confirmed the first point when he played the Velvet Underground earlier this month. Often, he'll start or end his answers with "I don't know," but sandwiched in between are thoughtful responses, revealing a cerebral musician who clearly cares a lot about what he makes. His first full-length offering, What's Wrong With New York?, will be released the same day as his Toronto show.
"The idea of the title is to be a double entendre. Depending on the tone you use when you say it, the meaning changes," he says before demonstrating: "What's wrong with New York?" Innocent. "There's nothing wrong with it. It's one interpretation. The other, of course, is, 'What the fuck is wrong with it?'"
Calling your album What's Wrong With New York? is only possible if you're not actually from New York. Smith grew up in a Seattle suburb and studied English literature at Lewis & Clark College in Portland before moving to New York.
Tracing his sonic origins from his last project, Turtlenecked, which skewed more indie rock, he laid the foundation for what have since become signatures of his music as the Dare: smartly constructed songs with DFA-esque beats and cheeky lyrics. Though he's abandoned romantic pining from his repertoire, his ability to turn quick and vulgar jokes has remained a through-line. From the closer of his last full-lengthed Turtlenecked album ("I thought I wanted Coca-Cola when I wanted to fuck!") though his central ethos as the Dare is a desire to make fun music. So how does he balance that good-time attitude with his need to be taken seriously?
"Somebody like Jarvis Cocker is really funny, but his music is taken seriously as art," he reflects. "It's fun to listen to, and it's fun to hear him do voices and play characters in the songs, but it's not one big joke or something."
Smith looks to Cocker as both a lyricist and a showman, though he draws a clean distinction between the Dare and Harrison Patrick Smith: "If I were doing that in my daily life, I think that'd be really annoying. Given the platform to and a stage to do that on, I'll definitely take that opportunity."
After releasing the last Turtlenecked album and EP quietly in 2020, Smith eventually started DJing around New York while working as a substitute teacher at a private school.
"Living downtown, experiencing things in real life, then also reading discourse on the internet about various writers or artists — there's just such a heated attitude about it. And it does feel like it's this cauldron that's bubbling with a bunch of stuff," he says. "A lot of people care about art in New York right now, which I think is a great thing. Either they hate it a lot, or they really are just out here playing shows and throwing poetry readings."
He continues, "I've been here for seven years. The last couple years have felt way more fertile and exciting. I wanted to nod to that, and also nod to the wrong and dirty side of living in New York. Nightlife is part of that."
Smith envisioned his debut record as a sort of concept album. Charting the course of a night out, the album maintains Smith's electroclash-inspired sound as well as his penchant for wordplay, all while stringing together anthemic hits. As many nights out tend to devolve after midnight, Smith aimed to mimic that trajectory through the album.
"I don't think anyone wants to hear, like, 30 minutes of straight bangers, or, like, 30 minutes of straight songs about sex, drugs, and rock n' roll," he observes. "For the arc of the album, I wanted there to be the crash out, where it gets out of control and it's not as fun. It's a little more unhinged and the emotions start coming through a little more."
Notably, "Elevation", the slowest song on the album, will strike the listener as different from the rest of Smith's offerings, a melancholy love song that evokes the best of HBO's Industry score. The last song to be written, Smith spent a while mixing the song with Romil Hemnani in L.A., as its earlier iterations didn't quite click. "Now, it's one of my favourites, but it wasn't something that happened instantaneously that felt really good," he says. Ultimately, Smith knew it was integral to the story he wanted to tell: "That was partially why I really fought for its inclusion."
After releasing The Sex EP last year, his songs "Girls" and "Sex" have polarized the internet, drawing the ire from some feminists and QAnon alike.
"Girls", a song about wanting to have sex, particularly with women, is obviously satire, and the claims of misogyny are, to this writer, coming from a place of bad faith (and perhaps an unwillingness to have fun). With his debut album, Smith opens himself up to increased scrutiny. One wonders whether this increased exposure is concerning. To his credit, this doesn't bother Smith much; he's more focused on being intentional with his releases and the story he's telling.
"This wasn't the way I always have done it, but when you have people start paying attention, that's when it gets a little bit fun," he acknowledges. "You can be like, 'Okay, you're going to come along with this ride.' I feel like it's a privilege to do that and that people actually care because it's fun."
Thankfully for Smith, no stranger to controversy, critics and haters alike won't find anything as provocative as the hairy ass and glory hole lines in "Girls" that made the rounds countless times on the Internet. Instead, Smith opts for fucking in a Benz, many mentions of killing oneself in a variety of ways, and irresistible perfume that makes men, women, and this writer ask, "What does the Dare smell like?" Smith turns in his chair to gaze upon his collection off-screen. There's a handful by Comme Des Garçons and recently he's been wearing Light Source by Andrea Maack; he's also got a handful of Troye Sivan's perfumes he stole at the launch. "He caught me," Smith jokes, though he managed to sneak away with a few.
Though the whole album is endlessly listenable, on one standout, "All Night," Smith sings, "I want more than fame / hope you feel the same." For someone whose trajectory seems to be moving at light speed, fame is coming, or perhaps has already arrived. What does Smith envision for himself in say, 10 or even 15 years? "Well, I would hope that I'd be married. And I would also to maybe live in a bigger apartment."
Until recently, Smith was still living with two roommates in Brooklyn. "I'm not living with my roommates anymore, and that's swell," he says, then pauses to mull over his future. I can't even imagine what he sees, how many different versions of his life must be possible, especially thinking that far ahead.
"I definitely would like to continue making music for the rest of my life," he says, and looks into the camera with a sideways glance. That conspiratorial smirk from earlier is back.
"Yeah, getting married, having a house. Maybe it sounds kind of nice."