Dashboard Confessional

Editor's Review:

Although they said the same thing when recordable cassettes came out, Internet downloading actually seems to be making a sizeable dent in the overall viability of the music industry's current business model. With music available for free online, the sales of CDs - which retail anywhere from $11.99 to $18.99 apiece - are, needless to say, slipping. What, you might be asking, does this have to do with the CD in question, the fifth release from the Dylan of the TRL generation, Chris Carrabba a.k.a. Dashboard Confessional? With online competition biting into sales, the industry has been forced to resort to creative measures, such as the one being more or less beta-tested with this release; the combining of the CD and DVD format in one pleasant, reasonably priced package.
Unplugged comes as a two-disc set - one CD and one DVD - while retailing for the same price as a run-of-the-mill CD release, thus encouraging you, the consumer, to purchase it as opposed to just downloading all the songs off the Internet. Moreover, the songs themselves aren't really worth it anyway; the 15 tracks on the CD are just a smattering of tracks from both previous Dashboard full-lengths and the two four-song EPs, which, while not completely uninspired, sounded better on their respective studio albums. However, the same 15 songs that seemed rather tiresome on the CD become somehow enlivened by the visual accompaniment, thus making the entire package worthy of purchase and quite possibly offering a glimmer of salvation for the music industry as a whole.
- Daniel Taylor
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Record Label Vagrant Released January 2003

Tracks Swiss Army Romance The Best Deceptions Remember to Breathe The Good Fight The Sharp Hint of the New Tears So Impossible Places You Have Come to Fear the Most Turpentine Chaser Living in Your Letters For You to Notice The Brilliant Dance Screaming Infidelities Saints and Sailors Again I Go Unnoticed Hands Down

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