My Saturday started innocently enough until a friend posed the question: are you going to the Open Tab show tonight?
A black and white poster had been floating around the social media stratosphere for the gig with no venue name, just an address on Broome Street. The show was celebrating the release of Open Tab’s (Fire Talk’s imprint) latest signee, The Dare (fka Turtlenecked).
The Dare’s debut track “Girls” is what I would call an instant classic. It’s like if LCD Soundsystem and 3OH!3 co-wrote a song together — it’s tongue-in-cheek, in your face, and contagiously catchy. It’s the dance track for the indie sleaze nostalgia chasers and current club kids alike.
Very little music has made me genuinely excited lately — live or recorded — but seeing The Dare perform in an ungodly hot converted gallery space turned that around. The whole evening was a sight to behold. Opening act, Shallowhalo, had an artist on stage doing multi-colored portraits of the band and hanging them up on the wall behind the stage as they performed. The room was packed and sweltering and no one seemed to care. With a lukewarm corona in hand, the sound guy smoking a cig as he surveyed the room, a man I have to assume works there offering everyone free tequila shots and repeatedly asking if we were having fun, and an industrial fan in the back of the venue trying to provide some sort of refuge, it felt like we were in a strange, but really fun, circle of hell.
Having no other preconceptions of The Dare except the recently released track I had quickly started listening to on repeat, it was exciting to see a set filled out with a variety of songs that were not as brash as “Girls”, but just as danceable and catchy. When the track hit at the end of the night, the crowd erupted. The Dare’s one and only member, Harrison Patrick Smith, flayed recklessly as people screamed along in lyrical step — the room flooded with fog, strobes, and sweat.
“Girls” leans into excess, clichés, debauchery, lust, messiness, and total abandon and the release show followed suit. It was perfectly captured chaos in the best way possible. Can’t wait to see what’s next for The Dare.
