You may know Dashboard Confessional for the teary-eyed, heart-on-sleeve approach that it took to winning over millions of fans with the intimate Swiss Army Romance album.
Well think again losers – because Dusk And Summer is the new Dashboard Confessional album, and it literally couldn't shoehorn itself any more into the middle of the road if it bought a pneumatic drill and a set of traffic cones. A sell-out? Well, obviously, yes; but is Dusk And Summer by Dashboard Confessional any good?
Dashboard Confessional has sort of flown under the radar here in the UK. After all, we've got Snow Patrol, so any blandly guitary MOR band masquerading as a credible indie combo that tries to break this country sort of instantly becomes redundant. But you've got to give Dashboard Confessional this – at least they're kinda transparent. For Dusk And Summer, Chris Carrabba has enlisted the help of producers who have worked with every soulless arena band going, from U2 to Linkin Park, and aimed himself squarely at the mainstream.
We've never been the biggest of Dashboard Confessional fans – personally, we'd like to ram Carrabba's guitar right up his stupid whiny arse – but we can't help but be impressed with Dusk And Summer's vastly capitalist ambition. Dashboard Confessional has already seen its songs grace the soundtracks of a few movies – like Shrek 2 and Spiderman 2 – but we're half-convinced that Dusk And Summer was conceived solely as an effort to get every song played at the most emotionally bombastic point of several different 12a-rated summer blockbusters, such is the amount of gratuitous empty emoting that goes on.
Not that Dusk And Summer is an album entirely without worth – when Carrabba stops shouting and lets all the dreadful FM radio production wear itself out, quieter songs like the title track show that Dashboard Confessional songs cope better when they show some restraint. Aside from that one tantalising respite, Dusk And Summer by Dashboard Confessional becomes so buckled by its own slick production that it's hard to even remember how most of the tunes go.
Buy Dusk And Summer by Dashboard Confessional from Amazon
[story by Stuart Heritage]
Static says
I was going to say – I’d like to shove this review up your bitter, semi-foul smelling arse, but how would I know these things. I rather like this album, I rather like slick FM production values and simple, catchy melodies. I rather like… ah, pish posh I’m bored with this…