Dashboard Confessional: Dusk And Summer : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Last time out -- on 2003's A Mark, a Mission, a Brand, a Scar-Dashboard Confessional made their big rock move, adding electric guitars and amped-up production to frontman Chris Carrabba's heartfelt emo-folk singalongs. Dusk and Summer sounds just as big and even better, with two producers -- Don Gilmore (Pearl Jam, Linkin Park) and Daniel Lanois (Bob Dylan, U2) -- adding a lush, layered sheen to a set of bighearted love songs as strong as those on Mark. Carrabba proves again that he's emo's best singer, channeling his malleable croon with grace and seize-the-moment power on big, aching cuts like "Reason to Believe," on which he sounds perfectly sincere and strangely charismatic rhyming "Don't you want to breathe?" with "My capillaries scream." Gorgeous, fully formed ballads like "Stolen" and "So Long, So Long" are long on elegant melodies, meticulous, swooning harmonies and wistful remembrances of tiny moments with ex-lovers. Dusk and Summer can be as ponderous and precious as a Hallmark card, but it succeeds because Carrabba has found music as intense and bittersweet as his deep, deep feelings.