CD: "Dusk and Summer" by Dashboard Confessional; Vagrant/Interscope Records

Released: June 27

Style: Pop/rock

My take: America's favorite broken-hearted sweetheart, Chris Carrabba, is back with "Dusk and Summer."

Carrabba created Dashboard Confessional to release material that he couldn't get out with his other band, the mildly successful Further Seems Forever. Dashboard Confessional, according to Carrabba, was his catharsis. It was meant to be raw and unpolished, and this is incredibly evident on 2000's "The Swiss Army Romance," 2001's "The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most" and 2002's "MTV Unplugged: 2.0."

If Dashboard's early work was about Carrabba's hard luck with girls, it soon became the soundtrack to every teen's story about being cheated on and dumped. And singing — nay, yelling — along with Carrabba became a way to let out this frustration. Just listen to "MTV Unplugged."

Interaction between the band and the fans was possible because the music was much more stripped down — with acoustic guitars and the occasional drums — than it has become. But 2003's "A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar" signaled Dashboard taking a new direction, as the band picked up Gibson guitars and plugged them into Marshall stacks. Dashboard didn't exactly go heavy metal, and though the pleading vocals about girls were still prevalent, most of the sincerity was lost in the electricity of the music.

"Dusk and Summer" is not a return to Dashboard's acoustic roots. In fact, it is full of arena-ready songs devoid of emotion. The band also got longtime U2 producer Daniel Lanois to produce "Heaven Here" and "Reason to Believe." This comes as no surprise — "Reason to Believe" has Carrabba trying his hardest to come off as an angry Bono.

But the band must be applauded for "Heaven Here," which features an interesting electronic opening and mechanical synths throughout, and though it comes off sounding a bit like "Pop"/"Zooropa"-era U2, it sure beats listening to the rest of the monotonous album. The first single, "Don't Wait," feels like a retread of the band's song "Vindicated," which was featured on the "Spider-Man 2" soundtrack, as do "Stolen" and "Rooftops and Invitations."

The album isn't bad, but too many songs sound the same. The exception is the title track, in which Carrabba revisits his old style — it's the album's most tender and sincere moment.

Perhaps the reason I'm so tough on Carrabba and company is I fell so deeply in love with "The Swiss Army Romance" and "The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most" when I was falling out of love with whatever girlfriend I had at the time. I was one of the off-pitch, sappy kids who sang too loudly at the concerts the band played here, and now I feel that one of the friends who got me through those times (keep the snickering down, please) has turned his back on me.

Carrabba may be an arena-rocker now, and maybe that's fitting: He's grown up and too mature to think about things such as emotions anymore, because emotions don't fill arenas as well as loud guitars and generic summer tunes do.

Joshua Masayoshi Huff, a graduate of Moanalua High School, attends George Washington University in Washington, D.C.