Here’s a review of Dusk and Summer from PopMatters’ Ryan McDermott who admits to be a closet DC fan back in high school…

The review echoes the sentiment of some of the long time fans… yeah, I’ll let you read it for yourself.

I have something to admit. Growing up in Jersey as a punk rock kid in the late ‘90s I was a closet Dashboard Confessional fan. And, after talking to some old friends who grew up the same way I did, we all came to realize that we had all been closet Dashboard fans.

I think it is inherent in punk and hardcore kids to like a few select softer bands. A lot of hardcore kids really loved Elliott in high school and it probably helped that that band was signed to Revelation Records, a hardcore label. Of course my love for Dashboard stopped after The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most because I had grown up a bit and also because I felt the band had worn out its heartbreaking welcome.

So now, two albums and five years later Carrabba and Company are still out there making new school emo anthems. But this Dashboard is nothing like what I remember from High School. This Dashboard has rock hooks and not much real emotion. This Dashboard is devoid of the only thing that actually made the band good: sincere heartbreak.

He gives it a 4 out of 10.

click here to read the rest of the article

Here’s a review from Entertainment Weekly from the concert in Radio City Music Hall in NYC [Aug 12]…

She liked Say Anything’s 30 min set more (i did too)

One year after touring with stadium fillers U2, Dashboard Confessional are drawing decent crowds of their own — on Aug. 12, in fact, they sold out New York’s Radio City Music Hall. The crowd was made up mostly of teenage girls and women in their 20s — all of them obsessed with frontman Chris Carrabba, to the presumed dismay of the unfortunate young lads they’d dragged along. (Also in the house: Carrabba’s No. 1 fan, his mother, whom he dutifully acknowledged during the show.)

The band is the brainchild of Carrabba, and tellingly, from the moment Dashboard stepped on stage, the spotlight was trained on him. It was almost painful to watch the rest of the band, including special guest violinist Susan Sherouse, who often performs and records with the group, slip into the shadows. Perhaps Dashboard Confessional will always be a solo act, the way Carrabba intended it to be back in 1999.

click here to read more

ouch, terrible review of a concert in Boston, MA…

Some things to clear up…
- Say Anything is not 1 CD in, (counting independent full-length releases).
- DC is 6 years old but it’s not his only band. You can say that his musical career is close to two decades.

…and uh, I lost my train of thought… on to the next thought:

However, I did agree that Say Anything’s 30 min set outshone DC’s performance (stop right now and drop that stone you’re going to throw at me). It’s not the same as it was 2 years ago that last time I saw them perform at the Greek Theatre here in LA. Don’t get me wrong I’m still a fan, if not, this site wouldn’t exist.

Anyhoo, tomorrow is the last night they will be performing on this summer tour in Wisconsin. They were suppose to play there last month but was cancelled to appear on The Today Show.

During Say Anything’s opening set for Dashboard Confessional, notoriously mouthy frontman Max Bemis felt compelled to heap praise on the night’s headliners.
‘‘If you respect bands that have worked hard from the beginning,” Bemis told the Sunday night capacity crowd at the Opera House, ‘‘Dashboard is definitely one of them. It’s no flash in the pan.”
Never mind that Bemis, 22, is just one CD into his career and Florida’s Dashboard Confessional is only six years old. Veterans they’re not. But it’s Bemis’ defensive tone that’s telling. The fact that Say Anything easily outshined the headlining band is further evidence that Dashboard’s live performance failed to live up to the smart guitar-pop of its polished new CD, ‘‘Dusk and Summer.”

Starting with a clumsy version of the new collection’s closer, ‘‘Heaven Here,” frontman and focal point Chris Carrabba began a set that pandered to teenaged confusion. Nothing wrong with that, but Carrabba’s self-serious press ramblings portray a man who aspires to greater artistic heights.

click here to read the rest of this article

DC stopped by New York City and the Radio City Music Hall for the second to last stop in the current tour. Here’s a review of that show from Newsday.

It’s not easy for an indie-rock band to merge into the mainstream without losing its fan base or its dignity. But Dashboard Confessional made the move masterfully, picking up momentum without leaving anyone behind.

Chris Carrabba and company accomplished it Saturday night at Radio City Music Hall by acknowledging the past with the emotional, painstakingly detailed sing-alongs that still make its live show unique, while still looking toward the future with the big, broad, stadium-ready rock anthems that dominate the new “Dusk and Summer” (Vagrant) album.

Early Dashboard Confessional shows would feature Carrabba and his acoustic guitar backed by the audience, who would try to deliver every lyric as expressively as he did. He hasn’t left that behind, embracing it in older songs such as “Screaming Infidelities” and “The Swiss Army Romance,” which he ends by essentially playing the guitar while the audience sings.

But the development is in the new songs. “Heaven Here,” which sounds big on the album, is massive in concert, with echoing drums and a pulsing U2-like bass. Carrabba rides the sound well, his voice soaring even higher as he works the crowd.

click here to read the rest of this article

ContactMusic’s David Adair has reviewed the single Don’t Wait.

and David, I (and hopefully most) have accepted the lost.

There once stood tall and emotive giant, Christopher Ender Carrabba whose songs were built up like Sears Tower, whereby he would throw his voice and emotions too, with the power and feeling of a pissed of pitcher. Now, he has decimated into a clichéd cheese purveyor who tries to force feeling out in his songs, rather like Homer Simpson trying to force up his flies. The result is that the number just gets taken over by lazy guitars hooks and token percussion. The 4th September 2006 is sad day; please use it to remember what we have lost.

Rating 2/10

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