Dashboard Confessional

As the popularity of Dashboard Confessional started to pick up somewhere around the release of 2001's The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most, the band commanded a following akin to a cult. In a good way, of course, as evidenced by their shows — sold-out affairs that broke down the barrier between song-quoting fans and frontman Chris Carrabba, a bloodletting beacon of modern emo as epitomized by such instant anthems as "Hands Down," "Saints and Sailors," and that perennial sing-along favorite "Screaming Infidelities."

Band-wise, Dashboard Confessional has grown in leaps and bounds with every album, as shown by the catalog-skimming selections of our Next Steps.

Alt-rock songwriting doesn't get much more soul-baring than in the work of Dashboard Confessional. Take the band's debut, The Swiss Army Romance, a no-frills effort that essentially features nothing but singer Chris Carrabba and his bonfire-ready acoustic. Left alone and unadorned, Carrabba's songs come into full bloom, exposing what a natural he is with a pen and a guitar pick, from the ragged riffs and soul-searching lyrics of "Again I Go Unnoticed" to the slick harmonies that rise to the surface in "The Sharp Hint of New Tears."

In the years since that buzz-stirring release, Carrabba has proven himself as quite a bandleader as well, something that's revealed throughout the rarities and fan favorities of our Deep Cuts.

When Michael Stipe himself shows up to help you cover an R.E.M. tune (a moonlit and moody rendition of "Drive"), you must be doing something right. And, well, Chris Carrabba has been hitting the mark for more than a decade, beginning with his stint as the spotlight-seizing singer in Further Seems Forever, one of the first bands to be tagged as "emocore" — a heart-tugging version of hardcore, reflecting the girl problems of punk kids who just hit high school. Dashboard Confessional couldn't have been a more natural transition, either, as the tattooed teddy bear moved from solo love songs with a bite ("Ender Will Save Us All," the synth-coated "This Is a Forgery") to full-on modern rock fare ("The Shade of Poison Trees," "Fever Dreams").

In the hands of Chris Carrabba — the pounding heart of Dashboard Confessional — an acoustic guitar can become a weapon, an instrument of adolescent angst that is to be followed at all costs by a generation of clued-in teens. But Carrabba's music has aged right along with his diverse audience, becoming more of a straight-up band setup — as opposed to, y'know, just a dude and his guitar — on Dashboard Confessional's last two albums, Dusk and Summer and The Shade of Poison Trees. No wonder why the one-time basement show icon was able to draw a sell-out crowd to Madison Square Garden in 2006 — a sea of thousands that stayed in tune with Carrabba's every syllable, from the slow build of "Stolen" to the explosive choruses of "Vindicated."