Dashboard Confessional

"Dusk and Summer"

Vagrant

3 Stars

I was late to discover Dashboard Confessional, and so it was just a year and a half ago that I first blared the song “Screaming Infidelities” from my ‘91 Jeep Cherokee.

Because I never bothered to look up the lyrics, I’d sing along to lead singer Chris Carrabba’s screams with my own improvised wails, issued from a college-obsessed, SAT-prepped, and senior-slumped psyche.

Now that I’m a year into college, Dashboard’s new CD “Dusk and Summer” has been released at the perfect time—my standard battery of Dashboard has begun to seem so, well, high school. I needed a new infusion of saccharine emo to provide the soundtrack to my dorm room pity-parties.

Thankfully, “Dusk and Summer” doesn’t disappoint. I still haven’t any clue what the lyrics to the songs are—the second track “Reason To Believe” is largely unintelligible, outside of its admonition to “breeeathe.” Already there, Chris.

Given that I associate Dashboard with emotional angst, I was a little put off by the bouncy opening rhythms of “Stolen,” the album’s fourth track.

To my great relief, my fears that the band might abandon self-indulgent pity were assuaged when they repeated “you have stolen from my heart” ad nauseum.

The first twenty seconds of “Stolen” aside, Carrabba’s wails continue throughout the album, with the exception of the title track.

Here, Carrabba strums and sings a surprisingly sedate tune. It could be, however, that Carrabba’s voice had simply become hoarse from screaming the previous eight tracks.

But Carrabba finishes strong on the CD’s final song, “Heaven Here,” gloriously straining “here” into fix or six syllables.

Others may fault Dashboard for their unoriginal lyrics, pop-emo sound, and general lack of angsty po-mo sophistication.

To these critics, I haven’t much to offer—again, Carraba’s lyrics are often incomprehensible, the music that accompanies his shrieks isn’t ground-breaking, and the album art shows Dashboard members gazing in odd directions on a windswept beach.

But who cares? I listen to music because I like how it sounds, or because it, in some inexplicable way, expresses how I feel.

So when you see me walking through the Yard, listening to Dashboard on my iPod, please don’t give me a hard time.

“The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most” got me through my senior year of high school, and “Dusk and Summer” has arrived just in time for concentration anxiety, Core science courses, and tutorial papers.

If only I had it last year, for Ec10.

—Reviewer Brittney L. Moraski can be reached at bmoraski@fas.harvard.edu.