dashboard confessional

A Week With Dashboard Confessional's "Dusk and Summer": Day 3

30 June 2006
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By this time – three days into an intensive and exhaustive study of Chris Carrabba’s newest Dashboard Confessional offering – it seems fitting to delve into the minutiae of the individual twigs of this branch, this thick oak trunk of emotive material that snaps ladies into frenzies and contorts them into The Swooned, capitalized. The album begins with the single, a song that asks a female to let down her guard to allow the moment to happen, to sweep her. It also begins with 15 seconds of instrumentation that will trigger a latent recognition of that one Sixpence None The Richer song, “Kiss Me” (“You wear those shoes and I will wear that dress/Ohhhhh”), the one that you hate yourself for dancing like a feather to in your own private dreams. As far as Dashboard singles go, the tigress passion and the strength in a bruising chorus are missing from past singles, which shouldn’t be simply for the complete turnover from acoustic to electric. Bruise us, Chris, bruise us with that painful, bandaged heart of yours. Give your scars a gun and drop the hammer. We know that he has them, but never sounds like his dimples, just the pensive expression of a relationship worrywart, and that expression should split verses like Paul Bunyan chopping through potential firewood, with a resounding sever. This is a mellow album that begs to be classified as Carrabba taking it down a notch, showing his softer side, but he’s already done that so many times that he should have sped off in the opposite direction with all of that electricity behind him. On “Slow Decay,” we revisit those choruses that usually get him drowned out by his admirers and you silently mouth the words, “That’s what I’m talking about.” This must be said, after three days, the beauty of his simple melodies – separated from his well-traveled subject matter – is coming through more with each listen. He knows how to sing the forbidden love that he knows so well. – Sean Moeller

Purchase Maritime music at: Insound

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