Honestly, tonight I was just looking for something to take my mind off everything and try and clear the head. Something a little nostalgic, something a lot of fun, and this is fitting the bill. I always thought it faced a little too much criticism from folks that wanted a repeat of their debut. This stretched their sound, gave us incredible songs like “Ready” and “Surprise, Surprise,” and holds up all these years later as a fun and underrated gem in the band’s catalog.

#vinyl #thestartingline

New Dashboard Confessional is out now. I’ve been obsessed with it for a while and now you can find out why. I think it’s an instant classic that reflects “us,” those that grew up in this scene, here, now, at this age and time. Highly recommended.

What I wrote a few weeks back: It has all the emotional and cathartic elements we know and love, but it’s wrapped in the stories of a man in his mid-forties. If his first few albums were walking us through heartbreak and young adulthood, these are the songs of coming to terms with and trying to figure out this next stage of life. Of marriage, family, and children, and where does one fit in after they’ve grown up? The songs vary from primarily acoustic to some full-band tracks, and I find it an incredibly refreshing return to form after being let down by the last album. From the ‘Alter the Ending’ echos in “The Better of Me” to the song that is going to absolutely wreck every emo parent, “Me and Mine,” to the begging to be sung along with “Southbound and Sinking,” this is Dashboard at his best. In college (deep breath ’cause I’m about to age myself), I used to listen to ‘The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most’ on repeat in my Discman while laying on my bottom bunk. I’d stare at the wood paneling and get lost between the songs and my thoughts. It was the perfect album to become enveloped in and the kind of songs that made you think about picking up a guitar and singing your heart out. I spent the other night laying on the couch, staring at the ceiling, with this album coming through my headphones. Some twenty years later, much has changed, but some of my favorite things have stayed just the same. And that moment in the dark, a Dashboard album making me contemplate life and my place within it, is one of those great moments where memory and the present collapse upon each other like a twisted aging mirror. Younger me thinking of what I’ll be like when I’m older, older me chuckling at the naivety of youth. Both happily lost in song. #vinyl #dashboardconfessional