Consequences & Detours is the second album by Detroit based power pop duo Crossword Smiles following on from Pressed & Ironed the band's debut in 2022. Tom Curless and Chip Saam recorded the album at Dungeon Studios in Marshall Michigan with Joey Boyea behind the desk, with a couple of tunes recorded and mixed by Greg Addington at EARTH Studios in Whitmore Lake Michigan. With musical assistance from Joel Boyea, Greg Addington, Rod Capps, Lenny Grassa, David Baldwin, Dave Caruso, Madeline Curless, Timothy Monger.
The album opens with Counting By Fives a wistful jangle pop song of love and lust for that one that might have got away, so intoxicated by the Loft and Jazz Butcher they were out of reach even with a Telescope nearby, he just wants to see you again.
Falling All Over Myself got everything in a twist over you, he'll beg and plead until your mine, just enjoy that guitar solo and give in, it is easier that way. If you tell him to leave, he will regretfully, he'll even put his anorak on and zip it up, just don't make him go.
Girls Club is a teen romance, string laden epic of wanting, yearning wanting to become mature that should be sung by far younger vocalists than this.
Millicent has that innocence of dreaming, that the most beautiful girl you've ever seen might be within reach, but she's going off to Spain without you, will it be the same when you return, the plucked string backing adds to the hopes and dreams.
Night Train is brass led and he isn't sure that he wants to be on a brassy Night Train, They go on a journey involving transfers and don't appear to be in some sort of Warriors nightmare being chased by the Lizzie's again, they make it safely to church.
Typical Waving Goodbye you've been kicked out again, time to get wistful and jangly, a touch laconic but not to iconic, wordplay twisting those last memories towards lamenting fiddlers.
Navigator Heart is looking back at the good old, bad old days, what went right and wrong in the space of that liaison, before you moved on to pastures new. Leaving them with enough stories to at least get a song out of being with you.
Once Or Twice is about someone lurking in the shadows, watching other people getting it on, dreaming of joining in, this is a sweet song of longing, that could easily teeter into rather creepy territory long before the instrumental leads us to find out just what happens in the end to Mr Mackenzie.
Fake A Smile they want to have that talk with you, well you probably already know they haven't a clue how to have a long-term relationship by now, so whatever they ask you, this will be as brief as a date on tinder, all the power pop loveliness in the world won't change that sadly.
Kismet is soft reflective, duffel coated poetic ministrations, to the one that will always be their very own Kismet, while sounding like they want to ask your parents' permission to stay out after dark.
The album closes with The Never Seen's you know, for those times you have to do the moonlit flit, her boyfriend has come home too early, suddenly crazy horse guitars are needed, do those neighbours exist or are they under the floorboards.
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