Dashboard Confessional

About Dashboard Confessional

Dashboard Confessional is essentially Chris Carrabba with a rotating cast of backing musicians, though that reductive description somehow misses how much the project shaped emo in the early 2000s. Carrabba started Dashboard as a side project in 1999 while playing in the Florida rock band Further Seems Forever, recording bedroom acoustic tracks that turned confessional songwriting into something rawer than what was happening in the genre at the time.

The early stuff was sparse. 2000's "The Swiss Army Romance" and 2001's "The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most" were mostly just Carrabba, an acoustic guitar, and lyrics that read like diary entries he maybe should have kept private. "Screaming Infidelities" became the calling card, a song so earnest it made other emo bands look emotionally guarded. MTV picked it up, and suddenly Dashboard was the face of a movement that involved a lot of sad guys with acoustic guitars playing to crowds who sang every word back louder than the artist.

"The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most" went gold, which is when Dashboard stopped being a solo project and became a full band. 2003's "A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar" brought electric guitars and drums into the mix. "Hands Down" was the big single, a song about a perfect moment that somehow didn't collapse under the weight of its own sentiment. It worked because Carrabba sold the emotion without winking at the camera.

Then came "Spider-Man 2" and "Vindicated" in 2004, which put Dashboard on modern rock radio next to bands that would never be caught dead playing an MTV Unplugged set. The song was bigger than anything Dashboard had done, moody and theatrical in a way that fit a superhero movie but still sounded like Carrabba.

2006's "Dusk and Summer" tried to mature the sound with producer Don Gilmore. It sold well enough but felt like Dashboard figuring out what an emo band sounds like when emo stops being the dominant genre. "Stolen" and "Don't Wait" got radio play, but the cultural moment was shifting.

After 2009's "Alter the Ending," Carrabba went quiet for a while, doing solo acoustic tours and working with Twin Forks, a folk-rock project that felt like Dashboard without the baggage. Dashboard came back in 2018 with "Crooked Shadows," which sounded exactly like Dashboard Confessional, for better or worse depending on whether you still want to hear Chris Carrabba sing about heartbreak.

They tour regularly now, mostly playing the old songs to people who were teenagers when "Screaming Infidelities" made them feel less alone. Carrabba's still doing the thing, and the thing still works if you're in the right mood for it.

Chris Carrabba plays basically the entire catalog at a pace that feels slower than the records, which turns the whole thing into something closer to a sing-along therapy session where some people are genuinely crying and the guy next to you is probably mouthing every word.

Known for Hands Down, Vindicated, Screaming Infidelities, Stolen, As Lovers Go

See Dashboard Confessional Live