Dashboard Confessional
Summers Kiss EP
Eulogy
I know people love to hate Dashboard Confessional in the same way they love to hate Jimmy Eat World – both have found mainstream success and critical acclaim despite their roots in the mother of all uncommercial genres: punk (or, in their cases, emo). If you’re offended by me unabashedly loving both D.C. and J.E.W. then read no further. I happen to find Dashboard some of the most brutal, poignant music I’ve ever heard, even if MTV loves it. And the thought of alternate versions of Dashboard songs getting released in EP form makes me salivate, quite frankly.
A nice concept, then: four tracks from Swiss Army Romance, the debut album from Chris Carrabba (a.k.a. Dashboard Confessional), rerecorded with a full band. The quartet forms a solid bridge between Dashboard’s bigger-than-Jimmy-Eat-World, “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Emo” 2001 release, The Places you Have Come to Fear the Most, and the Swiss Army-era material, with intuitive instrumentation and plenty of trademark Dashboard guitar flourishes and vocal harmonizing (the reworked “Living in Your Letters” being the best use of harmony I’ve heard from Chris). You even get a flashy orange digipack. What’s not to love?
Dashboard Confessional: http://www.dashboardconfessional.com
