Review: Dashboard Confessional on Conan O'Brien

Last night I had the good fortune to find out that Dashboard Confessional would be on Late Night with Conan O'Brien as the musical guest. While this would mean I would have to stay up a little later than I planned, it also meant I would be able to check out a live performance by an interesting acoustic emo act that I've grown to be quite a fan of.

Dashboard is the "solo" project of Chris Carrabba, formerly of Further Seems Forever. I say "solo" because he is only actually playing by himself on about half of the songs on his newest album, and indeed on Conan he was joined by his backing band of indie-rock clones with their indie t-shirt and jeans ensembles. I expected Chris to also be an indie-rock clone as well from the sound of his music, but I was shocked and horrified to a Frankenstein-like patchwork of other genres. His head, with its slicked back hair and nerdy apperance, looked straight out of Weezer. His arms were covered with an unnecessary excess of tattoos, a la Fred Durst or some other generic rap/rock frontman. Only the lower half of his body, with the same indie-rock jeans as his bandmates, portrayed his musical style accurately.

But that was just the image, the music also left a little to be desired. For some reason he chose to perform "Screaming Infidelities", which is not one of my favorite Dashboard Songs. "Your hair, it's everywhere" he screams over and over again as the song comes to a close. "Again I Go Unnoticed" would have been a much more apropos selection from the new album, especially since this would showcase more of the whole band, and it has infinitely better lyrics and music.

It was not a good introduction of Dashboard to the world, as now the populace probably view Chris Carrabbas not as the songwriting genius that he is, but instead as someone who tried to be a rap/rocker and in failing begrudgingly took up the acoustic guitar instead. It was disappointing, but it does not change the fact that the music of Dashboard as a whole is excellent and unique. Rap/metal image or not, expect the band to continue to release quality music in the future, so that I have even more CDs to spend all my money on.