WINNIPEG - It was paradise by the dashboard light — Dashboard Confessional’s light, that is — for the 2,800 or so fans who caught emo heartthrob Chris Carrabba’s show at the Convention Centre last night.

Carrabba, the heavily-tattooed, easy-on-the-eyes frontman of the plaintive alt-rock poster band, took the stage to a round of high-pitched screams yesterday before launching into Heaven Here, the closing track from his just-released album Dusk and Summer.

The new disc marks a slight departure for Carrabba, who trades in the sparse acoustic arrangements of his previous work for a few stadium-friendly tricks he picked up while touring with U2 last year (or from workshopping tracks with legendary Canadian producer Daniel Lanois).

For the most part, it works. On songs like Rooftops and Invitations, The Secret’s In the Telling, The Good Fight (from 2001’s The Places You Have Come To Fear the Most) and even a cover of Radiohead’s Fake Plastic Trees, Carrabba’s uber-heartfelt vocals more than matched the intensity of the thunderous five-piece who backed him up, chugging along with a propulsive fury that might come as a surprise to his detractors.

But it really shouldn’t. Of all his peers, Carrabba is perhaps the most adept at straddling the line between serious rocker and spokesman for disaffected teens everywhere, and while his sometimes cringe-worthy lyrics still target the anxious adolescent in all of us, the musicianship on display suggests he’s destined for greater things than just locker pin-up status.

And of course, it wouldn’t be a Dashboard Confessional show without a sing-along. This is, after all, the same guy whose fans hijacked an entire MTV Unplugged album by singing along to each and every song, and less than a minute into last night’s show, the crowd gathered at the front of Carrabba’s stage was already staging a repeat performance.

Earlier, opening act City and Colour (aka Alexisonfire guitarist Dallas Green) set a fittingly vulnerable tone for the evening with a half-hour set of meandering ballads from his debut disc Sometimes.

Green, who played a solo acoustic show in Winnipeg some months back, benefitted greatly from the addition of a bass player and keyboardist this time around, lending even more power to his already impressive, vaguely Jeff Buckley-ish set of pipes.