dashboard confessional

A Week With Dashboard Confessional's "Dusk and Summer": Day 2

29 June 2006
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An excerpt from Christopher Carrabba’s new song “Currents,” “If it is born in flames/Then we should let it burn/Burn as brightly as we can/If it’s got to end/Then let it end in flames/Let it burn all the way down.” A second day spent with “Dusk and Summer” makes it even more evident how much this tattooed Floridian brandishes the metaphors of passion to serve him best, right into the arms of the girls who’ve yet to become ghosts, as he sings in “So Long, So Long.” He works predominantly with the same pronoun and all those shes have stolen hearts from him, left him afraid of what’s coming next and uncertain about how it’s going to affect him. Carrabba seems stuck in a weird “Back to the Future/Groundhog Day” phase where the same problems are afflicting and conflicting him day-after-day (a la Bill Murray) and yet, there’s the notion that if things did advance, he’d find a way to return to them (a la Michael J. Fox and his handy flux capacitor). You feel like wailing, “Wise up! Learn from your mistakes, Chris!” What’s more unsettling is that the time has passed where he’s still writing for himself. With any great piece of artistic expression, there must be a strong relationship back to the person it floating out of. There must be a connection to the artist that’s so powerful it should feel like they’ve exorcised something when they’ve completed it. That’s not to say that demons have to be vanquished or past ills or joys explored until hoarseness and bleary eyes set in, but the attachment to the person must be evident. When a song gets distanced (and this is just an assumption) from what you imagine the singer’s life to actually be like these days, it’s not for he or she anymore. It’s written for others first and that’s deadly. I’m not saying there’s no way Carrabba still gets his breath taken away when he sees the curves of certain bodies or he needs to toss pep talks at his lungs so they’ll speak for him, and I’m not saying he still lives the unrequited love life of a high school junior, but…Maybe he does still strike out more than he scores. If so, then this record’s more heartbreaking than I’m giving it credit for. – Sean Moeller

Purchase Maritime music at: Insound

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