Friday 11/04/08 Dashboard Confessional @ The Zodiac, Oxford

“Hi. My name is Chris.” As in Chris Carrabba, former member of Further Seems Forever, and pivotal figure in the American college rock movement. He’s the reason why the Zodiac room is crammed to full capacity this fine Friday evening. Tonight his band is having a well deserved rest, and he’s performing an acoustic set. Solo. On his lonesome. A return to his “roots” (and by “roots” we mean ‘The Swiss Army Knife’ era). This is good news, surely?

The thing with Dashboard Confessional - and the reason why tonight won’t be a complete shambles, nor a disappointment - is that the songs have such an emphasis on the guitar melody, everything else is often just decorative. Take ‘Don’t Wait’ (from the rockier ‘Dusk and Summer’ album), it seems much nicer and less intrusive in this acoustic setting than on record.

‘Where There’s Gold’ is a song about an actress he once went out with (to wolf whistles from the crowd), “Which was great because they’re foxy – but also kind crazy… although she doesn’t know I think she’s crazy”. He chooses not to play many songs from the new album, telling the crowd, he’s not sure whether we know his old or his new stuff. Some loud mouth in the crowd shouts “Old!”, so he presses on with some older songs from ‘The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most’ (which could be an acoustic album, but strictly isn’t). ‘The Brilliant Dance’ sounds much like its original but there’s something about Chris just going through the motions. ‘Screaming Infidelities’, “a song about a girl” (aren't they all, Chris?), gets slightly more emotion pouring, giving a retrospective glimpse back at the twenty something ‘emotionally uninhibited’ person we all know and love. The lyrics “Your hair is everywhere, screaming infidelities” is perfectly pitched to the audience, his gentility shines through. ‘The Good Fight’ has the crowd singing along. There are times when Chris does not sing, and just strums on his guitar, providing musical accompaniment to the singing crowd. Nice!

Chris asks why there’s a bottle of milk on stage. Some wise guy in the crowd shouts “It’s not milk!” Chris responds “Oh it’s that kind of gig?” For someone whose songs are all about girls trampling over his heart, we didn’t expect him to be funny. The set ends with a beautiful version of, underrated song, ‘Stolen’ about a girl who stole his heart (haven’t they all?). Chris’s singing becomes disparate to the lyrics “You are the best one” – he seems to really mean this. The crowd love him, singing the lyrics for him at obvious interludes.

The thing with Dashboard that has always puzzled me is that his/their success is fundamentally based upon his failings with girls. He is “an emo God” (according to some random in this crowd) because of his audience’s empathy with this ‘loser in love’ position. His songwriting skills are about professing human emotions about relationship shortcomings, which when played alongside an acoustic melody, seem that more potent. We wonder what the future holds for Chris, will he be thirty and still writing and playing songs about cheating girls? Possibly. The jury’s out on whether that is a good thing or not...