I’ve told the story before of buying The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most at a music store in Florida on my fifteenth birthday. Little did I know that that very same day, Dashboard Confessional released a delightful concept EP that only the most emo of emo bands could pull off.

So Impossible is a four-track story of a first date with the singer’s crush, aided only by his own acoustic guitar and the acoustic noodlings of Sunny Day Real Estate’s Dan Hoerner.

In writing, it sounds like the kind of thing that should be lost to the forgotten custom HTML of LiveJournal pages. But in spite of—or maybe even because of—its simplicity, it remains enduringly charming.

It should be noted that when this EP was released, Chris Carabba was on an undeniable hot streak. Between March of 2000 and this album, he had released two Dashboard Confessional full-lengths, one Dashboard EP, and the long-awaited debut of emo heroes Further Seems Forever. He had already left FSF at that time and was focusing all of his attention on Dashboard, and it was starting to pay off. Places was a much more ambitious undertaking than The Swiss Army Romance, employing a full band for a number of the tracks (including two tracks from the previous record).

But when he went to record So Impossible, he took a sonic step back (in a good way), redirecting his ambition to the concept of the project—and also hiring one of Emo’s bonafide Godfathers.

The inclusion of Dan Hoerner was a shock to many oldheads, many of whom considered Dashboard to be the symbol of what was wrong with the trajectory emo had taken. I remember that Sunny Day’s Diary was often hoisted up as a rebuttal to Dashboard Confessional, as an example of what emo could and should be. If there was any sort of dissonance in ethos between the two players, it doesn’t make it onto the record. Dan’s spiraling acoustic leads weave so delicately around Chris’s parts that it’s easy to forget that this isn’t Chris by himself.

The concept of the EP is very simple, but it’s deftly crafted. “For You To Notice” finds the narrator pining for a crush, watching her from afar as he daydreams what it would look like if she returned his affections. Instead, he simply watches from across the classroom, waiting for her to even notice him.

But then in the second track, “So Impossible,” she does—and that noticing is accompanied with an invitation to a party. They share their mutual curiosity with one another, expressing their shared desire to get to know eachother better. They set the date, ending the song with, “I’ll see you there.”

But on “Remember to Breathe,” the most introspective track on the record, the excitement turns to anxiety as the narrator prepares himself for his dream date. She always looks perfect, so what can he do to compare? He starts to panic and exhorts himself to keep breathing.

Then, the night finally comes in “Hands Down,” the big finale, which includes perhaps Dashboard’s most iconic lyric: “My hopes are so high that your kiss might kill me, so won’t you kill me so I die happy?” Pure emo gold, with all of the earnestness and emotional overindulgence that almost makes you cringe. And as the song continues, they sneak off from the party, safely alone, enjoying the ecstasy of one another. They stay out too late, rush home, jump gates, and give one last kiss at her doorstep (free of death, btw). And she meant it. 

And while it might fall short from a critical perspective, it’s not like anyone is claiming it’s high art. It has a strict concept, but it lacks the scope of rock operas from days past. But emo was always—for good or for ill—the realm of introspection. So Impossible is a snapshot of introspection, constructed almost like a three-act, student-directed play (with the opening track as the narrated prologue). It knows exactly what it’s trying to be, and it achieves that excellently.