An old school indie tour of Camden Town with The Dare

It’s an early autumn morning in London’s Camden town, and The Dare’s Harrison Smith is sitting in a shoddy British cafe tucking into a greasy fry-up of sausages and baked beans. The Brooklyn-based musician is here for the start of his European tour – which is also his first as a solo artist. Dressed head-to-toe in a Gucci suit – the same kind of shirt-and-tie look captured by Hedi Slimane before he DJ’ed the Celine fashion show in LA last December – we pick away at breakfast, an episode of Antiques Roadshow airing on a television behind us. 

“I think the suit is an interesting choice adjacent to the music, because the music is in your face and loud and colourful – and I think there’s something cool about the juxtaposition of that music with a really formal, clean look,” he muses. Although it’s had different lifespans – the suit was originally cobbled together from thrift stores – it’s part of The Dare’s signature look, and he’s rarely spotted without it. “Now it’s become a little bit of a character, like when we put on a suit and go Dare mode.”

The Brooklyn-based artist is best known for his 2022 single “Girls” – a sleazy, sex-positive anthem that became somewhat of a scene-defining moment for the indie revival that swept across New York’s downtown post-pandemic. Even before its official release, the track could be heard blasting through speakers at Smith’s weekly Frequencies night, a go-to for the city’s club kids. Smith’s smutty confessions about “girls who like to fuck” and “girls who got so much hair on they ass, it clogs the drain” are particularly memorable, like a horny, high-voltage earworm. “I didn’t expect this [response] at all,” he confesses. “I knew that people in New York would care a little bit, because I would play [“Girls”] at my DJ sets and people would sing along. But I didn’t know it was going to become a whole, snowballing thing that would lead to a record deal and travelling here.”

Rewind a couple of years, however, and Smith was playing bass for bands, making money waiting tables at a French restaurant and teaching guitar lessons in and around New York. “It’s pretty much a total 180,” he reflects, “a brand new career – it’s crazy.” This unlikely transition, from regular dude to frontman, came sometime around the COVID lockdown when he decided to take up DJing. It’s around the same time that the hype surrounding New York’s Dimes Square was taking off – other artists associated with the scene, including Blaketheman and Frost Children, are Smith’s close friends and collaborators. “It’s interesting because the Dimes Square scene got so much hate and controversy, and people are addicted to talking about it,” he says. “That’s good for the press, but it also was weird to be the subject of so much attention, hatred and discourse.”

“People are freaking out about the number of articles written [about the Downtown scene]. There are articles about how many articles there are, because I think everybody in New York is desperate for a big cultural moment and wants to frame it as that – but it’s too young,” he says. “That’s why people get mad, because there’s no legitimate centre to this scene. They say there’s no legitimate art being made, which I don’t think is true. I just think it’s way more complex and spread out through New York, beyond this tiny thing that people are trying to call a movement.”

Before meeting Smith for the first time, I’d spent several spells in New York, where Downtown friends had described him as a shy and nerdy guy – in short, nothing like his brash public image. When I meet him today, those accounts check out: he has the cute demeanour of a music nerd, soft-spoken yet with a quiet confidence. “Meet me after a few drinks in the club and maybe it’s different,” he grins. True to his indie lineage, Smith’s sex appeal is a funny one – he’s reserved but horny, polite but wants to fuck. He taps into that generational zeitgeist of zoomers who spent too long in their bedrooms over the COVID lockdown, and whose hedonistic impulses hark back to a nostalgia marked by American Apparel, the Cobra Snake and 2010s electroclash. 

“It is funny and weird to have some sort of renown attached to your stage name,” he reflects. “I think there are really cool things about it, like when you’re with other musicians, they accept you and then you can hang out with them and be on their level, because you’re experiencing the same sort of relationship to culture and fans, and what it’s like to have a job as a musician.”

But sudden fame can have its downsides – earlier this year, Smith found himself at the centre of a Satanic conspiracy. The artwork for his debut EP, The Sex EP – featuring young-looking models posing suggestively in American Apparel-adjacent attire – landed him in the Daily Mail’s Sidebar of Shame. “It was a crazy thing to experience and a little bit frightening, because I was reminded that these people are out there and they are kind of unhinged,” he confesses. “I’ve seen horribly pornographic album covers for 40 years and when I made [the artwork], I was like, this is so normal. But the kind of people who are coming for me are obsessed with this stuff to the point where they’d send my friends DMs on Instagram like, ‘I will save you’.”

Finishing up breakfast, we hop on the number one bus to Camden Lock and pay homage to one of indie’s greats at the bronze Amy Winehouse statue. It’s a short walk away from The Hawley Arms, a pub so notorious for early-aughts debauchery that it mysteriously burst into flames in 2008. Inside, the walls are covered with signed, framed tributes to British indie patrons of yore, from The Libertines and Razorlight to Wolf Alice. As we survey our forebears, we sip on some pints and reflect on the scene’s apparent ‘comeback’. “It’s strange because I don’t think there’s an [indie] revival musically. I think a lot of people are making electro and pop music,” he explains. “They’re making dance music, but very few bands are actively trying to revive this sound. I would say I’m one of the only ones who is or incorporates those influences in a really direct way.”

Later that week, Smith performs a string of shows across London. The crowds are a mixed bag: young and wild, eager to soak up the scenester vibes. “I do feel like I’m a part of something really meaningful,” he concludes. “I don’t know if it’s a huge movement, like the invention of grunge or something, but I do feel like I am part of a group of somewhat like-minded artists that exist beyond New York. The attitude is unique to the previous generation. But I think people just want to feel like they’re living through a really important time and culture.”

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