CD Review: Dusk and Summer, Dashboard Confessional

We all harbor that dark secret, that guiltiest of private pleasures, that would cause any of us to spontaneously unravel and implode if the wrong persons unearthed our classified information.

As for me, I never shot choreographed home videos of me lip-synching to Milli Vanilli.  I never wrote diary entries in which I confessed my love for the geeky vice president of the chess club.  And I certainly don't wear the shame of my friend Leigh who experimented with alternative places to put peanut butter for Lady, her family dog, to lick. (To maintain her privacy, I should note that I created a fictional name; the dog's name is not actually Lady.)

What's my secret?  If you must know, I always keep a copy of Dashboard Confessional's The Places You Have Come To Fear The Most in my car.  And I sing along.  Loudly.  To every word.  A lot.

There, I said it.

The mother of all emo albums, Places would be defensible work if it weren't for lead singer Chris Carrabba's gushing saccharine hypersensitive confessions that are calculated to captivate the budding heart of every 14-year-old girl. 

I am a 32-year-old man.  I should not be singing along to the soundtrack for those struggling with the awkwardness of training bras.  But how can any person with a heart refuse that album, which is more addictive than chocolate-flavored crack?

I thought the honesty of this confession — mirroring Dashboard's typical emotional nakedness — would give me a sense of catharsis.  But I feel like I am sharing the titles of a sick pornography collection with my pastor and mother-in-law. 

Come to think of it, Carrabba and I are almost the same age.  But that doesn't remedy the discomfort of sharing that my Places disc and I have been patiently waiting — for half a decade — for a proper Dashboard follow-up that feeds my addiction with new material.  My car stereo is so nauseated from spinning Places that it once projectile vomited one of my multiple copies. 

Dashboard's follow-up album in 2003, A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar, was a clear statement that the band wanted to shed their emo image and move toward more arena rock anthems.  But the booming electric guitar of that album drowned out any raw emotion that might've been audible in an acoustic version.  Places and A Mark dated briefly, but broke up before Mark got to first base.

At last, Dashboard has birthed a new album that is a worthy soulmate to Places: Dusk and Summer.  The album still finds Carrabba experimenting with a harder-edged rock style, but producer Don Gilmore has managed to let Carrabba's honesty float above the reverb.

"Stolen," the fourth track on Dusk and Summer, exemplifies what is both sickening and stupefying about Dashboard.  The song's lyrics sound like a parody of a bad poem scribbled in the diary of a temp worker hired by Hallmark.  Indeed, the chorus is a repetition of an unoriginal and simple line: "You have stolen my heart."  Yet, my cynicism melts away when I become convinced that Carrabba is hurting while singing it.  Listening to the song, I simultaneously search my own catalogue of pain, wishing that I could do something to ease his heartache, and now I have missed my freeway exit ramp and I will be late to work. 

As it turns out, "Stolen" is only one of several standout sing-along anthems.  Another testament to Dashboard's hypnotic powers is the gorgeous piano ballad, "So Long, So Long."  The song includes guest vocals by Adam Duritz of the incorrigible Counting Crows, which frequently contends for the title of Worst Band in the Universe.  But when Carrabba risks a loss of oxygen to hit that high B flat note and announce to everyone that he's gone, I forgive his trespasses and forget everything but his dramatic departure.

God forbid that I admit to feeling a deep sense of sorrow even when reading the album credits, which note that the songs are published by "Hey, did she ask about me? Music".  What other band can make a person choke up in the legal fine print of the liner notes?

By the end of Dusk and Summer — should I call it the Autumn Evening of the CD? — Dashboard makes clear that is not attempting to broaden its base, to move towards an edgier sound, or to find a way to encroach upon Slipknot's fan base.  The band simply embraces the sound that befits Carrabba's unfiltered lyrics.

Thankfully, the closer — "Heaven Here" — helps sober me up.  Oh sure, the finale wears its heart on its sleeve and transports me on a rapturous emotional journey like the best of them.  But with lyrics like "Heaven is here / And tonight / We are the only ones who feel it," I remember that Chris Carrabba is that singer-songwriter guy who came in last place at the Battle of the Bands but ended up walking away with all the cute girls.

But despite the jealousy and dirty guilt triggered by Dashboard's oozing emotions and sensitive-guy modus operandi, I am grateful for this album.  It feeds my darkest addiction. 

P.S. Don't tell anyone, but even after multiple listens, I continue to bask in the glow of love emanating from my two Dashboard CDs who have found, in each other, companions worthy of a lifetime, and now, yet again, I have missed my exit.