Crossword Smiles - Consequences & Detours
BIG STIR RECORDS is proud to announce the return of Detroit indie pop duo CROSSWORD SMILES with their second album, CONSEQUENCES & DETOURS, out on Vinyl, CD and Streaming worldwide on May 23. Already teased by the hit single “Falling All Over Myself” (with the equally compelling “Counting By Fives” to follow in the coming weeks), it's the followup to their surprise hit 2022 debut Pressed & Ironed, delivering on the promise of that record's hooks, inspired lyrics and timeless arrangements while pushing their unique sound in exciting new directions. CONSEQUENCES & DETOURS is up for pre-order.
CONSEQUENCES & DETOURS reunites the musical minds behind CROSSWORD SMILES – power pop veterans TOM CURLESS and CHIP SAAM – to continue exploring new sonic textures and lyrical landscapes, and applying them to the kind of perfect pop-rock song structures and melodies at which they excel. It's a winning combination of inspiration and songcraft that expands on the foundation of the first album and delivers a set of instantly memorable, richly detailed melodic gems that sound like nothing else coming out of the Midwest in 2025.
When they emerged three years back, CROSSWORD SMILES drew immediate notice for presenting a new sound even for the the deeply respected Michigan-based guitar-pop stalwarts at its core. The band had been quietly formed a few years earlier by CURLESS, formerly of Your Gracious Host and currently enjoying solo success, and SAAM, best known as the bassist for The Hangabouts and Curless's backing band The 46% and the host of the indispensable Indie Pop Takeout show on Neighborhood Weekly Radio. The impulse behind the new collaboration? A pure and simple wish from a pair of like-minded music fans to hear something different.
The resulting and instantly-appealing sound suggests a blend of Crowded House and The Replacements with a bent toward sharp character studies in the Ray Davies tradition, but there are countless other guiding lights here. Spotting them is half of the fun: Chip and Tom share an encyclopedic grasp of pop-rock history in all its many flavors, and the CROSSWORD SMILES ethos lets them go deep-diving for inspiration. You could hear their mutual love for the too-often-overlooked likes of Joe Jackson, The Go-Betweens, Freedy Johnston and The Blue Nile all over the debut album, and on CONSEQUENCES, they lean into those influences and add still more from the their eclectic array of personal favorites. Tinges of Michael Penn and Del Amitri can be heard in Tom's tender but sly vocal delivery – check out the pitch-perfect melancholy of “Once Or Twice” – and the band cites diverse inspirations from Madness (“Night Train”) to Guided By Voices (on the lead single “Falling All Over Myself”) to The Left Banke (“Girls Club”) when discussing the new tunes.
But again, nothing on CONSEQUENCES & DETOURS sounds precisely like any of those artists. Nor does it line up exactly with the superb back catalogs of either of its two chief architects. It's something completely new and timeless. That may owe to the scrupulously collaborative nature of the songwriting – both members have a hand in the crafting of every tune – or perhaps it's because CROSSWORD SMILES has taken on an identity of its very own, instinctively grasped by its creators and instantly recognizable in its uniqueness.
Confident in that identity, Curless and Saam free themselves to follow their shared “Navigator Heart” (to borrow the title of a standout track) and fold new sounds into the songs this time out. Violin blends with synths amid the new-wave inspired hooks of “Typical Waving Goodbye”, accordion ornaments the plaintive and flat-out lovely “Millicent”, and trumpets complete the Two-Tone tribute “Night Train”, while harpsichord and e-bow weave through the mix on other tracks. While these flourishes bolster the Euro-pop and UK rock textures that suffuse CONSEQUENCES & DETOURS, they're contributed by the band's Midwestern peers, most notably members of The Hangabouts and The Needmores. Fundamentally, though, it's the core duo you'll hear, sharing guitar duties with Tom on drums and Chip on bass. And they can rock, too – as evidenced not only on the singles but on the delightful heaviness of the album-closing “The Never Seens” as well.
Would it all have sounded completely at home on college radio circa 1985? Absolutely. But what Chip Saam and Tom Curless have established across two albums may be even more vital on today's melodic rock scene where too many bands are sheltering in the shade of the the same weather-worn power pop and retro-rock touchstones. Their burgeoning catalog amply demonstrates that there's more than one way to hang a hook, and the indie pop world is that much richer for having CROSSWORD SMILES in it. Far from a sidetrip on the musical landscape of 2025, CONSEQUENCES & DETOURS is a journey in itself, and one no fan of indie pop and rock will want to miss taking.
