Dashboard Confessional – The All-American Rejects – The Maine – The Social Animals: Live at Blue Hills Bank Pavilion


Since the late 90s, Florida native singer songwriter Chris Carrabba although the front man for Further Seems Forever at the time, he found his way with his solo project Dashboard Confessional. Starting his career solo acoustic guitar and then eventually getting a full band, completing his vision for that time in his life. This tour is a celebration of most of Chris’ career and his fans.

Tonight garage rock quartet The Social Animals played first, hailing from Duluth, MN their début EP Formative Years came out late in 2016. Arizona’s pop punk outfit The Maine were up next, they are celebrating their newest release Lovely Little Lonely that came earlier out this year, suit wearing frontman John O’Callaghan stated he had a fever, but that didn’t dampen the energy. If anything it made him all the more entertaining, he kept commenting on a car inside the venue that he wanted to somehow win. He even brought a fan on stage to sing.

Next up was The All-American Rejects, they may have stolen the show from a purely visual standpoint. They had laser lights galore and lead singer Tyson Ritter had very hyper active energy akin to Steven Tyler. They played all their hits and then some. The early August night was for perfect sing along tunes and this lineup.

Dashboard took the stage and the set list was a combination of two eras, paying homage to DC songs and Carraba’s solo material. With a few rearranged solo acoustic tunes with added band parts, they opened the show with a few songs from Carraba’s first two albums, Swiss Army Romance and The Places you Have Come to Fear the Most. Chris wore his heart on his sleeve as he looked gleefully into the crowd, singing the words back to him. They played all material from the first few albums between 2000-2006, plus a few covers including The Cure’s ‘Just Like Heaven’ and they played a new song ‘We Fight’ that will be on an upcoming album. It was great to see how far along they have come from the early stages to present day and definitely looking forward to what lies ahead for Barabbas and his band.

WORDS AND PHOTOS BY MATT LAMBERT