The Dare

One Liner: LCD Soundsystem-esque party pop
Wikipedia Genre: Dance-punk, electroclash, electropop, new rave, indie rock
Home: NYC

Poster Position: Second Quarter - Line 9
Day: Sunday
Both Weekends.

Miller Lite Stage at 3:15 (how you gonna put party music at 3:15?)

Thoughts:  I have an uneasy relationship with LCD Soundsystem.  I think their initial popularity grated me the wrong way, and so I was ready to dismiss them immediately, and then I sort of caught some of the bug and allowed myself to jam out to some of the tunes.  And then I saw their ACL taping a few years back and was like, meh?  I have documented my ambivalence for them here, back when they came to ACL a few years back.

Well, this is not that, but it is a damn good facsimile.  And, I actually like it.  Made me wonder if the name he uses for the band is because someone dared him to make LCD Soundsystem sound-alike music when LCD supposedly retired a few years ago.

Harrison Patrick Smith used to perform as Turtlenecked - indie music he put together after he graduated from Lewis & Clark College in Portland.  Pitchfork and NPR both said nice things about Turtlenecked.  He moved to NYC and kept doing his thing, even after the pandemic restrictions were lifted, teaching at a private school as he did his thing.  But, during the pandemic, he was goofing around with electronic music to send to friends and play around with funny lyrics.  As a riff on the Rolling Stones' album Some Girls, he wrote "Girls."  He tried playing it at a Turtlenecked show, and even thought it was totally different than the usual indie tunes for that band, he noticed that the crowd was into it.  62.3 million streams.

Unhinged and funny stuff.  Girls who hate cops and buy guns?  And the girls with hairy asses?  NPR named this the fifth best song of 2022, and Smith's response was to call it a rejection of the last five years of music.  Good times though.  Since then, he's gotten to open for Charlie XCX and Yves Tumor.  He helped produce one of the songs on brat, called "Guess."  I never got in to that album, at all.

Just one album, 2024's What's Wrong with New York?  None of the other songs are nearly as huge as that one, but "Good Time" makes the best attempt at 7.1 million streams.

That one is another party anthem, but it has a little darkness underneath the party, like you're trying really hard to have that good time but underneath you are really having a terrible time and wish you could go home.  I think it is the chorus sounding more like NIN than LCD, but the breakdown freakout is pretty fun.

Honestly, sounds pretty fun for a show.  Which is sort of funny, since I just crapped on the Sammy Virji guy for sounding like generic EDM when this guy is pretty dang close to the same, just with better lyrics.  I'd party.