Crooked Shadows marks the return of Dashboard Confessional after eight long years, a band once considered to be at the very forefront of the emo scene. The mixed reviews received for their last album (2009’s Alter The Ending), plus frontman Chris Carrabba’s fear of burning out or “Phoning in the next tour” seemed to herald the end of the much-loved band. However, their return to the live scene in 2016 has now been added to by an expected seventh studio album. Unfortunately Crooked Shadows may leave some feeling it would have been best for Dashboard Confessional to stay as a fond memory.

Short at just nine tracks (perhaps one for each year away) and 30 minutes long, the album begins promisingly with ‘We Fight’ – a rallying call originally written about the emo scene, a world that Carrabba has described as, “Where people who’d never quite fit in anywhere felt they actually belonged”. Taking on wider meaning in a world split into a seemingly insurmountable divide, it’s a driving piece of emo that offers an updated version of Dashboard Confessional’s classic sound and sentiment (“There’s still a kid somewhere that needs to hear this…who is tired of bleeding and battered and torn up). Sadly, the rest of the album doesn’t live up to this start.

‘Catch You’ is harmless enough, a fairly nondescript slice of pop punk with familiar riffs lying over 80s new wave-style synths. The message at its heart is that Carrabba will ‘be there for you’, a point that he makes repeatedly alongside his unyielding belief in “you” or “us”. These two themes appear so repetitively throughout the record that it simply appears that he has run out of anything else of consequence to say. As an emotive lyricist who shot to fame with his ability to capture pivotal moments in life, the vacuousness of a track like ‘Belong’ is jarring. Singing: “Reach out and take my hand, we got radio pumping jams … Feel the wind blowing in your hair, the sun on your face and a song in the air” over a grating electro beat from Cash Cash, it is all a very long distance from the emotionally wrought The Places You Have Come To Fear The Most. While nobody would wish a life of misery on anyone, songs like that are perhaps not what fans would be hoping for.

In the time that Dashboard have been away, many rock bands have moved towards the mainstream successfully – even just this year, Fall Out Boy released an album that is undeniably as pop as it gets. Recognising that trend, Crooked Shadows attempts a similar trick – the title track and ‘About Us’ seem to be written with arenas in mind. However, it is only on ‘Heart Beat Here’ and the closing ‘Just What To Say’ that the record really hits its mark – both are noticeably stripped right back to Carrabba and a guitar. The latter in particular, with an additional layer of vocals from Against The Current’s Chrissy Costanza, feels at last like a moment of emotional truth amongst a sea of vague sentiments with its description of Carrabba battling writer’s block.

Despite its short length, Crooked Shadows still manages to overstay its welcome. After an eight year wait, there is an overriding feeling of ‘is that it?’ which is desperately sad for a band that holds so much importance for so many – though how many original fans are still in the same place that they were 20 years ago is unclear. The biggest tragedy here is that a scene that Chris Carrabba helped to forge has moved on so much that he has been left behind.

Jamie MacMillan

Website – dashboardconfessional.com
Facebook – facebook.com/DashboardConfessional
Twitter – twitter.com/dashboardmusic