Emo fill-ups Dashboard Confessional go electric; plus Brand New and Vendetta Red BY SEAN RICHARDSON

Until now, few rock fans ever thought emo would get its very own version of Bob Dylan going electric at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. But that’s exactly what happens a few seconds into the new Dashboard Confessional video, "Hands Down": there’s frontman Chris Carrabba, the photogenic face of emo unplugged, chugging away on a Les Paul and singing a new arrangement of a song that originally appeared on the group’s stellar 2001 EP So Impossible (Vagrant). With its distorted riffs and cymbal crashes — not to mention the AC/DC–style band logo on the kick-drum — the video makes it clear that the once acoustic Dashboard are turning to electrified rock with as much defiance as Dylan did way back when.

And so far, fans are digging it: Dashboard’s new A Mark, a Mission, a Brand, a Scar debuted at #2 on the Billboard 200 chart when it was released last month. That triumph marks the culmination of a breakthrough year for the group, who emerged a few years back as Miami punk Carrabba’s solo project. The 2001 CD The Places You Have Come To Fear the Most was the first disc he recorded with a full band, and also his first for the emo-oriented Vagrant, which is distributed by TVT. A year after its release, the album spawned the hit "Screaming Infidelities," which turned Carrabba into a left-field media sensation. High-profile tours with Weezer and Beck followed, along with a live disc, MTV Unplugged 2.0, that let the rest of the rock world in on the Dashboard concert phenomenon: emotionally charged sing-along confessionals that feel like a cross between a punk matinee and a sorority party.

The lovestruck glee of "Hands Down," the first track on A Mark, a Mission, a Brand, a Scar, makes it an essential companion to the despairing "Screaming Infidelities." "My hopes are so high that your kiss might kill me/So won’t you kill me/So I die happy," Carrabba croons, his allegorical death wish at odds with the jaunty guitar accompaniment. The electric and acoustic versions of the song are both effective, but the climax — "Hands down this is the best day I can ever remember" — benefits from the buzz of electric guitar and drums on the new version. When the girl kisses him as if she meant it at the end of the song, Carrabba’s famous good looks play second fiddle to his passionate vocals.

Dashboard recorded A Mark in Miami with veteran producer Gil Norton, who made his name with the Pixies and has also worked on hit albums by Counting Crows and Foo Fighters. The recently reconstituted supporting cast includes guitarist John Lefler, Promise Ring bassist Scott Schoenbeck, and drummer Mike Marsh, Carrabba’s fellow Floridian and the only other holdover from Places. The band are currently headlining a six-week tour that will hit Tsongas Arena in Lowell this Saturday with opening acts MXPX, Brand New, and Vendetta Red.

The productions and performances on A Mark are first-rate: the songs have enough bite to run with the Warped Tour crowd, but at the same time Carrabba gets to emphasize the pop side of his rock æsthetic. Lefler’s guitar melodies bring a welcome infusion of color, and the rhythm section’s command of dynamics give the album a chamber-pop feel even though there are rarely more than four instruments playing at once. And this is Carrabba’s sunniest batch of songs yet. He hasn’t rid himself of the sentimental streak so common in emocore, but his melancholia remains an inspiration for anthemic rock songs.

Carrabba’s signature move, heard on both "Screaming Infidelities" and "Hands Down," is running through the chorus several times before introducing a totally new maximum-catharsis sing-along at the end. He gets a lot of mileage out of this technique on A Mark. "Rapid Hope Loss" is a smoldering power ballad that finishes with a vengeful kiss-off: "I guess that all you’ve got is all you’re gonna get." On "Carve Your Heart Out Yourself," he patches up a lovers’ spat with a mirthful pledge to stay with his girl always. The closing "Several Ways To Die Trying" sticks with its original chorus and signs off with a rasp of optimism: "I’m dying to live."

Going electric presents one significant challenge for Carrabba: with the novelty of being punk’s most popular acoustic-guitar-wielding frontman behind him, he’s jettisoned the one device that distinguished him from hordes of other modern-rock hopefuls. But instead of trying to overpower the competition, he’s opted to focus on melodies and arrangements. Dashboard Confessional strike soft-rock gold on "Hey Girl," with Carrabba setting his sights on a cutie whose uptight friends think he’s crazy and Lefler playing wingman with some well aimed volleys of new-wave riffs. "Am I Missing" finds Carrabba at his most serious: "Is there anything worth waiting for/Worth living for/Worth dying for?" Now that he’s gotten over the heartbreak that inspired the songs that made him famous, he’s got bigger problems to sing about — and a lot more fans to sing along with him.

AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SUMMER, Long Island punks Brand New had a huge grassroots following and a new recording contract with the BMG-distributed Razor & Tie label but not much in the way of mainstream media exposure. That began to change when the release of their second album, Deja Entendu, was greeted with lofty sales numbers (#63 on the Billboard 200) and loads of critical acclaim. The hype intensified during their stint on the Warped Tour, and now they’re making their debut on modern-rock playlists with "The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows." What’s more, the song’s stylish video, which was made in Boston by Corporate Sucker Films, has recently started showing up on MTV.

The road to success has been a relatively short one for Brand New. Their low-budget debut, Your Favorite Weapon (Triple Crown), came out two years ago and spawned the underground hit "Jude Law and a Semester Abroad," which is emo at its most sarcastic: "Tell all the English boys you meet/About the American boy back in the states." After they got signed, the band headed to Charlotte to record Deja Entendu with producer Steven Haigler, who helped modern-rockers Fuel and Oleander get on radio and has also worked with Dashboard Confessional producer Gil Norton.

"The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows" is as convincing as emo breakthrough singles get. Frontman Jesse Lacey does Morrissey better than any of his peers on the verse, then trades screams with guitarist Vin Accardi on the chorus. Some scenesters have begun bitching about the Creed and Papa Roach guitar quotes that litter the song, but punks are always more fun when they embrace the dumb rocker within. And the sing-along that ends the track is equal parts creepy and infectious: "I lie for only you/And I lie well/Hallelujah."

The disc’s explosive hit single aside, Deja Entendu works best as a whole. Lacey is sinking like a stone in the sea on the meditative opener "Tautou" (no apparent connection to actress Audrey); on the closing "Play Crack the Sky," he drowns off the eastern tip of Long Island with only his acoustic guitar. In between, Brand New throw out the pop-punk rulebook and reinvent themselves as a muscular hybrid of the Used and the Flaming Lips. "Glory Fades" shifts between a loose funk verse and a spastic chorus; the quirky anthemic refrain "Okay I Believe You, But My Tommy Gun Don’t" balances idealism with Lacey’s trademark sarcasm. Lacey gets stranger as the album goes on: the disc’s big metal move, "Guernica," is a prayer for his sick grandfather, and he turns the awkwardness of a drunken hook-up into shimmering catharsis on "Me vs. Maradona vs. Elvis." Bold, bombastic, and clever, Deja Entendu is one of the best commercial-punk albums so far this year.

WITH THE HIT "SHATTERDAY," Vendetta Red have made it farther up the modern-rock singles chart this year than anybody else on the Dashboard Confessional tour. And that makes sense, because along with fellow Seattle punks MXPX, who are about to release their third A&M disc, Vendetta Red are the only ones signed to a bona fide major label, Epic. The band also had big-name producer Jerry Finn (Blink-182) on their side when they recorded their new Between the Never and the Now. Still, when it comes to national touring, they’re the new kids on the block.

Like Dashboard and Brand New, Vendetta Red write their songs with audience participation in mind. After ripping through the chorus twice on "Shatterday," they drop out and invite a bunch of their friends to sing along at the top of their lungs in a studio simulation of a real punk show. As all-ages anthems go, it’s pretty surreal — "Scars they cut into you/Blisters rose colored hue/Mayday we’re going down" — but there’s a sense of uplift in the group’s attack that keeps it grounded.

The emo tag barely fits Vendetta Red: they don’t sing about girls, and their frenetic art rock sounds more like an odd cross between Rage Against the Machine and Radiohead than anything else. Frontman Zach Davidson floats into a dreamy falsetto on "Seconds Away," and he saves his most literal lines for "Por Vida," a screaming tirade against organized religion. The rampaging "Caught You like a Cold" is where the band best achieve the goal they share with their tour mates: to use pop punk as a vehicle for something deeper and more soul-baring than cheap thrills.

Dashboard Confessional, MXPX, Brand New, and Vendetta Red perform this Saturday, September 6, at Tsongas Arena in Lowell; call (978) 848-6900.