Dashboard Confessional – The Swiss Army Romance

screaming infidelities through dial up connections

On the way home this car hears my confessions
I think tonight I’ll take the long way

MSN Messenger was launched in 1999, developed by Microsoft as a way for internet users to chat with their friends. With the Internet still firmly in the Web 1.0 era, with browsers navigating between distinct websites, MSN was a welcome free-form system for discussion and content sharing, being especially popular with teenagers. One of the quirks of the system was allowing profiles to set a “status message,” a short line of text under their username. Presumably, this feature was added so that people could write “just going to the shops BRB,” or “studying hard 4 my GCSEs…” but more enterprising teens soon found a more creative use for this ad space: sappy emo song lyrics.

A friend of mine had Your hair is everywhere, screaming infidelities, and taking its wear proudly posted one day. What? Weird lyrics. So naturally I asked who they were from. It was Dashboard Confessional.

Dashboard stand out for their sincerity, even in a genre defined by it. Starting out as a solo project from Further Seems Forever frontman Chris Carrabba, the project had a soaring rise to relevance, being the softest, most sensitive edge of the emo knife cutting through popular culture. Starting off purely acoustic, Chris’ songs were simple and heartfelt. With his band falling apart around him, Chris made the most of the situation—and ended up creating a powerful second life as emo’s most beloved poet of affection.

2000’s The Swiss Army Romance is the result of his early recording sessions. The album is Dashboard’s most straightforward work—often with just a single guitar track and Chris’ vocals, the most dramatic exception being the synth-filled bonus track This Is A Forgery, hinting at greater musical ambitions to come. But this record isn’t plucking and mumbling. Chris plays acoustic guitar with poise—big energetic swings of his arm, slamming the guitar like a drum. He yelps and cries and bawls, alongside calmer strumming. The result is musically cathartic, strong simple chords powering tales of amour and youth. And while the tracks are sonically modest, his lyrics shine brightly, unavoidably, through. So much so that they influenced a generation of musicians.

Pouring over photographs
I’m living in your letters
Breathe deeply from this envelope
It smells like you and I can’t be without that scent
It’s filling me with all you mean to me
To me

Chris really is the blueprint for what mainstream emo lyrics would become. Post-hardcore had always been emotive, but there’s an accessibility and tenderness to Dashboard—a desire to sing in a sweet, palliative way—which led them to connect with a new audience so fully. Yes, his images can be blunt, unironic—“Again I Go Unnoticed,” “Living In Your Letters,” “The Sharp Hint of New Tears”—but let’s get serious. These lines have become emo cliché because they’re so effective, because speaking directly to this kind of alienation connected with millions of budding listeners. It helped teens and tweens unpack confusion, upset, loss, and longing in a genuine way. Many of his fans had never heard anything like this, and they were glad they’d found it now.

Please, tell me you’re just feeling tired
‘Cause if it’s more than that, I feel that I might break
Out of touch, out of time

True to the MSN vibe of Chris’ lyrics, file-sharing was key to Dashboard’s popularity, with people Napstering around this earnest, simple music freely to anyone who felt it. This organic popularity would push Chris to heights, with a successful MTV Unplugged recording in 2002, and his 2003 album A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar producing the career-defining Hands Down. Still further, he’d record the banner track for the Spider-Man 2 soundtrack. In devoted fashion, Dashboard had a song I Need a Sure Thing ready to go, but upon viewing a test screening of the movie, Chris was so inspired that he freshly wrote Vindicated, a sweeping, chest-beating FM rock anthem that still maintained all of the buoyant delicacy he was known for. These days he’s something approaching a household name, playing for Taylor Swift and swanning around with Hayley Williams. A happy ending for such a simple album from such an honest project.

I’ll always remember hearing Dashboard for the first time. Clicking open PureVolume via an MSN status. Music that can transport you back there so clearly is a gift, and one I know Chris understands the gravity of.

We’re not twenty-one
But the sooner we are, the sooner the fun will begin
So get out your fake eyelashes and fake IDs and real disasters ensue
It’s cool to take these chances
It’s cool to fake romances
And grow up fast