Unglued Reviews

While Dashboard Confessional built its early reputation on Chris Carrabba’s acoustic guitar and emotionally honest and revealing lyrics, successive releases have seen the outfit’s sound shift, accommodating the transition to a consistent full band lineup and losing much of Carrabba’s angst for an almost adult contemporary rock feel. Although commercially popular, albums such as Dusk And Summer have distanced Dashboard from their original fanbase. The Shade Of Poison Trees is a largely successful attempt to reconnect.

You can’t go home again, of course, and the completely naked intimacy of the past proves elusive, but the acoustic urgency of Where There’s Gold… is a welcome return to begin the album with, and even with the full band on board, first single Thick As Thieves captures a lightness of touch that’s been missing from their recent releases. It’s delightfully easy to sing along with Carraba’s familiar, slightly quavering vocals.

Although it’s not an all-acoustic solo album, the stripped-back acoustic numbers dominate, thanks to the strength of cuts like Keep Watch For The Mines and the clarity of Little Bombs. The full band, on the other hand, are particularly good on the loping Matters Of Blood And Connection, a sneering put-down of slumming rich kids which pointedly asks, “Why do you speak with that accent now? Everyone knows you’re not from the streets”. However, the robotic drums underpinning Fever Dreams go against the organic feel of the record, and the title track is really a pretty dreary yawnfest.

Yet while The Shade Of Poison Trees isn’t perfect, it wouldn’t be too far off the mark to call the 34-minute album a return to form.

Owen Heitmann