Dashboard Confessional have marched right back into the studio to release brand-new album, The Shade of Poison Trees. Hopefully, it will be a last.

With five studio albums, one live album and three EPs you would think Dashboard Confessional's The Shade of Poison Trees would be nothing short of a masterpiece. However, maybe the attention they gained from their last album, Dusk and Summer (2006) has taken its toll, as this new compilation can only be described as 12 tracks which the band quickly pulled together out of boredom just to keep their name on the front of a magazine.

OK, this may not be totally fair. The first two tracks, Where There's Gold and Thick as Thieves really do pack the old sounding (think pre-The Places that you come to fear the Most) Dashboard punch, with a chirpy optimism “You may be a sinner/But you may be justified”, as well as telling the listener some honest truths, for example “Where there's gold, there's a gold digger”, wrapped up with a belting ender to the album, Widow's Peak, a lovely ballad with soaring vocals.

However, it is between these tracks where it all seems to go wrong. Wrong as in you would find more interest in everything around you but the CD itself - a different band's album perhaps.

There's no melody or lyric which you can remember in your head after hearing it first time round, as well as the tracks feeling as though they are all flowing into one long song, like a very dull story a teacher may have told the class in primary school.

It's just too contrary. The worst of the songs being Fever Dreams in which the lyrics are so repetitious (they go along the lines of “They can only haunt you/ 'Til the fever breaks”), you would be forgiven for thinking the disc is skipping.

This album may have a couple of great tracks, good enough to be used as single material, and if Dashboard Confessional were a newcomers it could have shown promise, but considering the foursome are heavyweights of the business, unless you are a hardcore fan of the band, it’s best the consumer keeps their money pocketed and wait for their next release.