While usually lumped in with the sensitive souls of emotional hardcore, Dashboard Confessional – the stage name of Conneticut-born singer-songwriter Chris Carrabba – has traditionally cut a much more intimate, acoustic-tinged furrow. Dusk And Summer, however, sees Carrabba spirit up a much denser, rockier instrumentation that should see long-term fans harking back to his '90s outfit, Further Seems Forever. Is Chris risking it all, leaving his own introspective headspace … mehrand traipsing back to the crowded landscape of US rock? Not necessarily – 'Rooftops And Invitations' makes a decent fist of melding a balladry of passion and restraint with some pluming, U2-style dynamics, while 'Don't Wait' proves that the acoustic guitar still lies at the centre of the Dashboard design. Fans should also cock an ear to 'So Long So Long', a hushed piano duet with Adam Duritz of Counting Crows with a lyric that plays to their collective talent for misty-eyed nostalgia: "How the girls can turn to ghosts before your eyes/ And the very dreams that led to them are keeping them from dying". Newcomers might want to start elsewhere - Dusk And Summer is far from representative of their style – but if each Dashboard album is a page in Carrabba's own personal journal, it's clear there's still many pages to be written. --Louis Pattison weniger

1 - Don't Wait
2 - Reason To Believe
3 - The Secret's In The Telling
4 - Stolen
5 - Rooftops And Invitations… mehr
6 - So Long, So Long
7 - Currents
8 - Slow Decay
9 - Dusk And Summer
10 - Heaven Here weniger