It's a great time in the nostalgia cycle for anyone who spent their formative horny years in skinny jeans. Sure, "indie sleaze" has threatened to bring the post-punk revival back for the last two years, but now that it's fully tangible, purists want to slam a genre that was never fully defined and always a bit nasty.
Nobody has embodied this so shamelessly as the Dare, who earned himself the nickname "STD Soundsystem" after What's Wrong with New York? dropped last week. It's a concise study in shameless character play, in which Harrison Patrick Smith owns his hedonism. It's not so much a matter of being in on the bit, or privy to electroclash's sordid sparkle. Much like Smith's pheromonal lust, it's about the right buttons being pushed unexplainably.
Sex isn't the only desire the Dare assumes you have — he also wants you to buy his sonically idealized version of New York. His guitars are slightly driven, soaking up the excess of the drippy synths. "I Destroyed Disco" could only come from the city that birthed it, as could the slew of cool women to categorize yourself with on "Girls." So long as you're listening, there's only one place that matters, and you better wish you were there.
It only works if you believe the Dare is a persona and not Smith's highest self. That eureka moment came to me at his release night show in Toronto last Friday, where the effort he put into his NPC came full circle. The woman whipping her ponytail in my friend and I's faces was still annoying, but isn't that part of the ethos? Were the strangers nearby grinding on each other, or was the room too tight to tell the difference? If "Free your ass and your mind will follow" means anything, it won't matter in the morning, so you better lean into it now.