Poor Chris Carrabba. In the early-00s, when his project Dashboard Confessional first appeared, he was hailed as the bard of the overly-self-analyzing generatio, an acoustic troubadour reviewed in the pages of too-hip mags like Nylon. But that was before "emo" -- which, arguably, he didn't really play -- became a dirty word. Times have changed. The unrelenting super-youth of the current Warped Tour generation makes Carrabba look like a grandpa, and a few years back he became more of a punchline, a musical symbol of affluent exurban white people's self-indulgence.
Then again, boo-hoo, I'm sure he's crying all the way to the bank. As the cooler-than-thou underground-ish hordes have abandoned him, Carrabba has turned more and more to meat-and-potatoes, monster-ballad sounds. And it works for him. Why be sad all the time when you're financially successful, thirtysomething, and married with a home in sunny Florida?
Dashboard Confessional, the band, has a new album to promote, called Alter the Ending. To support it, they're touring as support for no less than Bon Jovi. Crazy. The tour arrives at the BankAtlantic Center on April 18.
Here they are performing "Get Me Right" on a recent episode of ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live! Live,
Carrabba can sound nasal and somewhat strained, which is the case here.
If you can get through the almost-acoustic introductory bars, though,
the song starts to rock in the middle.
Also, Carrabba has long
boasted in his backing band one of the best drummers to come out of
the area, Mike Marsh. I would say more about the latter's late, great
band the Agency, for which he also sang, Rush-style, but '90s nostalgia is best administered in small doses.
The
video isn't embeddable. (Why? why? JUST ADD ADS TO THE BEGINNING IF
NECESSARY - even the derided Vevo service on YouTube now allows
embedding.) So click here to watch it.
