My fifteenth birthday was a formative one. While on vacation with my family, I made the conscious decision to stop spiking my hair and instead push it forward. I decided to put away my past-the-knee shorts and skate shoes in favor of slim fit jeans and Chuck Taylors. And when given free reign at a CD shop, I bought Dashboard Confessional’s The Places You Have Come To Fear The Most (and the first two Juliana Theory EPs) instead of the earlier Blink-182 albums that I had been eyeing for a while.

I had weighed the options, and decided: I was going to be an emo kid.

And over the next year, Dashboard Confessional would be central to that process. I absolutely devoured the first two albums, detuning my guitar to Chris Carabba’s open chords and training my voice to yelp similarly. I was even reminded recently of a short-lived solo project called Just My Luck that aped every part of his own solo work.

But unfortunately, those two records are nearly impossible to find on vinyl. Copies of Swiss Army Romance go for over $250. The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most has never been pressed (though his next two Vagrant releases were reissued a couple years ago?) And so, I found myself with no choice than to swallow my pride and buy this uneven and, at times, bizarre compilation.

The Best Ones of the Best Ones compiles (as the title suggests) the best songs from the best albums in the Dashboard Confessional catalog. However, it takes some odd turns to get there.

Disc 1 is the much more satisfying of the two, collecting tracks from Swiss Army and Places (“Screaming Infidelities,” “Swiss Army Romance,” “The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most,” to name a few) alongside two from the absolutely wonderful So Impossible EP that featured Sunny Day Real Estate’s Dan Horner on guitar (I literally cried out in relief to hear that the EP version of “Hands Down” rather than the later full band version the one on this disc).

After the EP tracks, three more songs from the first two LPs are included—but pulled from the MTV Unplugged live versions. “The Best Deceptions” features the crowd’s vocals almost as loudly as Carabba’s, save when he’s adding some new vocal affectations (like the guttural scream on the final verse that betrays his emotional hardcore roots). “The Sharp Hint of New Tears,” originally from the voice-and-guitar-only Swiss Army are given the full band treatment of Places. “The Brilliant Dance” is the least jarring of the live tracks, but it lacks the crystal clear of the studio version.

The second disc is far less memorable. Save for “Drowning” from the very first EP (that I didn’t know existed!) and “Vindicated” from the Spider-Man 2 Soundtrack, everything is from the later, electric guitar-led later records. Having decided way back in 2003 on my first listen to A Mark • A Mission • A Brand • A Scar that that version of Dashboard wasn’t for me, the rest of the playlist isn’t nearly as satisfying as the first disc. There are a couple tracks pulled from each of their later albums, including two tracks from their 2018 album Crooked Shadows (Dashboard released an album in 2018?). The further the playlist moves through his chronology, the less grabbed I am by them. Is this a testament to the power of sentimentality, which cemented the first two albums in my mind, or did he actually get objectively worse as time went on?

That said, there are a few gems tucked away in the second half. “The Ghost of a Good Thing” is the kind of hushed acoustic ballad that informed the quieter moments of Swiss Army. “Don’t Wait” is visceral and anthemic, inspiring the best kinds of throat-shredding singalongs that the first two albums evoked. “Fever Dreams” is a fun little bop aided by a pulsing electronic drum pattern and twinkling synths.

In the end though, The Best Ones of the Best Ones further demonstrates what we knew all along: the best Dashboard Confessional compilation possible would just be a double LP repress of the first two LPs with So Impossible included as a bonus 10″. The question remains: why haven’t any of those records been repressed on vinyl (barring the weird, unpractical 5×7″ box set of Swiss Army Romance)? Does Vagrant records hate making money? Is Chris a glutton for punishment? In the meantime, disc one will have to do, I guess.