Premiere: Debut album from Chris Carrabba's Twin Forks

• Twin Forks will release its self-titled debut album Feb. 25 on Dine Alone Records
• Frontman Chris Carrabba released six albums under the name Dashboard Confessional from 2000 to 2009
• Follow the band on Twitter or Instagram%3A @twinforksmusic

Dashboard Confessional fans will find familiarity in Chris Carrabba's new band, Twin Forks: his earnest, emotion-up-front delivery, a certain way with a melody.

But the acoustic quartet's debut album, premiering at USA TODAY the week before its Feb. 25 release, also takes Carrabba in a new musical direction.

"It's so different from Dashboard, in every way," says Carrabba, who released six studio albums under the Dashboard Confessional moniker between 2000 and 2009. "To me, it's like being in my first band. It's like being in your first band, but you already know people."

Some of those people are bandmates Ben Homola, Suzie Zeldin and Jonathan Clark, musician friends Carrabba and admired and wanted to put in the same room. "I thought wouldn't it be great if I could get together these incredibly fun, incredible talented people who have an unbridled enthusiasm for music that lacks any snark and see if we could come up with something special together," he says.

Twin Forks released a five-song EP last fall, but Carrabba fans could have gotten a clue of his future direction from a covers album he sold at shows during a solo tour in 2011. That album, Covered in the Flood, featured songs penned by the likes of Guy Clark, John Prine and Justin Townes Earle.

"That was a major transitional piece for me," says Carrabba, 38. "It was the beginning of allowing my influences to show directly. I'd spent so much of my early career trying to develop something new. Part of that comes from a desire to maybe mask your biggest or earliest influences."

Two moments set Carrabba on his current musical path. First, a promoter friend booked him at San Francisco's Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival, "when I was writing the more delicate record I thought would be the post-Dashboard sound," and he found that he preferred playing the more boot-stomping numbers from the covers album.

Second, Clark, who would become Twin Forks' bassist and co-produce the band's album, asked him an incisive question. "Jonathan said, 'Why are you afraid to play what you love on records?'" Carrabba says. "That really stung me. No one wants to be told they're afraid when you feel like your whole sense of writing is about being brave. But he was right."

While Twin Forks was woodshedding and developing its style, bands like Mumford & Sons and the Avett Brothers were exploding in the marketplace, creating a new audience for acoustic musicc.

"Those bands could write dubstep songs, and they'd still be hits," Carrabba says. "Whatever choices they make for instrumentation, they write hit songs. Lucky for us, they love the same instruments we love. That gives us a chance for listeners check us out. It's a really exciting time for that kind of music, especially as a long-time acoustic performer."

What's different about Carrabba's new band? "Having the hopefulness, the joy and the celebration right on the surface is something that makes it new and exciting," he says. "There were plenty of joyous songs in Dashboard. There were also dour songs in Dashboard — it wasn't dissimilar from the Cure, or Taylor Swift, in that regard. Good albums need to have happy songs and sad songs. Of course, I got pigeonholed a little bit into just having sad songs."

Twin Forks will play South by Southwest next month in Austin, Texas, following that with a European tour. The group will tour the U.S. with Augustana beginning in April and will stop at several folk festivals throughout the year.

"Because so much of what we do is about playing live, two great songs that might be great introductions to who we are as a live band are Back to You and Scraping Up the Pieces," Carrabba says. "If you're curious to what its like to be at a Twin Forks live show, those are indicators."

Twin Forks is currently available for pre-order at iTunes.