All Chris Carrabba’s albums as heartthrob-in-chief of Dashboard Confessional have been about tension, primarily romantic: He can't help comparing his current love to the idealized version in his pretty little head. But an aesthetic battle also rages within Carrabba, one pitting Dashboard's solo-acoustic roots against the frontman's desire to move arenas with the intensity of his emotion. After making a pair of big-budget rock records with A-list producers Gil Norton and Daniel Lanois, Carrabba stripped down for 2007's The Shade of Poison Trees, which successfully convinced early-decade Dashboard fans that he hadn't left the campfire forever.
