Dashboard Confessional: Chris Carrabba (vocals, guitar).

Additional personnel: Dan Bonebrake (bass, background vocals); Mike Marsh (drums, background vocals); Jolie Lindholm (background vocals).

It will always be a difficult gambit writing intelligent, heartrending indie-rock guitar ballads wrought with agony without resorting to pretension, syrupy self-pity, or both. Dashboard Confessional manages to avoid such pitfalls with insightful, poignantly etched stories of the end of love and the edge of love, elegantly playing with words while keeping hackneyed lines and cornball moments at bay. DC's second album, THE PLACES YOU HAVE COME TO FEAR THE MOST, continues the Vagrant label's ascent into the forefront of earnest, emotional indie rock.

Dashboard Confessional is actually the vehicle for the musings of one man, Chris Carrabba. The frontman for at least two Florida rock bands, he derived the name from a line in one of his songs. Carrabba wears his heart on his sleeve on pleading, stirring break-up songs like “The Good Fight” (“claimed you as my only hope and watched the floor as you retreated”), “Saints and Sinners” (“this apartment is starving for an argument”) and the radio-ready “Screaming Infidelities” (“I'm missing your bed, I never sleep”). THE PLACES… suits Carrabba's tortured soul well, and sets a seat for Dashboard Confessional at the ever-finicky emo table.

What the critics say…

Spin (2/03, p.96) – “…Honest, direct, and utterly serious…”
Q (10/02, p.104) – 4 stars out of 5 – “…An exhilarating mix of self-pity and revenge…”