Dashboard Confessional – The Shade Of Poison Trees

I’ve always enjoyed Dashboard Confessional. They were never up on my list of favorite bands nor were they ever a band that I would go out of my way to listen to. However, I did enjoy them. Screaming Infidelities, The Places You Have Come To Fear The Most, The Best Deception were all songs I liked and had no problem replaying. But as Dashboard became bigger, Chris Carrabba decided to expand his sound, leaving behind the personalized acoustic songs and adding on a full band. This was met with mixed reaction and while the songs weren’t bad, it couldn’t hold up to his more personal earlier material. In fact, Dusk and Summer received such a bland reaction I never even bothered listening to it. Carrabba knew that this new approach wasn’t working quite as well and decided that for his fifth album,The Shade Of Poison Trees, he would return to his original form and go back to his acoustic roots.

From the get go, the album looks promising. Where There’s Gold… is a passionate, catchy emo ballad that only Carrabba could deliver. At times the falsetto voice can become a tad high, but it still works in the song. The guitar work is there again and there is just a very personal touch to the songs and as you listen to the opening track you can’t help but have great hopes for the eleven remaining tracks.

However, the eleven remaining tracks aren’t able to maintain that spark that ran through the opening track. Sure, it doesn’t sink in right away, Thick As Thieves does keep the album on track and as it slips off near the middle Carrabba pulls the listener back with Fever Dreams, Little Bombs and the title track; but you soon realize that the album is somewhat dull. Individually the songs are rather enjoyable. With pleasant acoustic pop songs full of heartfelt lyrics that aren’t overtly sappy, The Shade Of Poison Trees doesn’t falter because of filler – in fact, there truly isn’t a bad song to speak off on the record. It faulters as it becomes slightly complacent.

The songs are good but as an album they become too similar to one another, void of the originality that carried Dashboard‘s earlier material. Little Bombs is the sole track that carries the same energy and spark of The Swiss Army Romance. Carrabba’s guitar comes through with a force unlike anywhere else on the record and his vocals are delivered with a conviction that is lacking in the rest of the record. Songs like The Shade Of Poison Trees and Where There’s Gold… sees Carrabba crooning softly but Little Bombs sees him singing with more passion and emotion; something that really sets the song apart from the rest of the album.

While being a marked improvement upon some of his more recent material and a nice return to his roots, The Shade Of Poison Trees is still unable to recreate the conviction that Carrabba had earlier in his career and the record can’t stand up together. The songs are entertaining by themselves and do feature some variety amongst one another (like the building violin on Clean Breaks) but aren’t able to work together as much as the listener would like and becomes repetitive after a while. It’s worth a few listens for Dashboard fans but probably won’t last too long in your CD player.