Tom Curless and Chip Saam anticipate life’s twists and turns and adjust their plans and perspectives accordingly on Consequences & Detours, the new album by their band, Crossword Smiles.

“At this point in our lives, we start to have a different perspective on life,” said Curless, who lives south of Flint in the town of Grand Blanc.

“You start to see things a little higher at a 30,000-foot view. I’ve lost people, I’ve lost my parents, and all of a sudden, you say, ‘Wow, life seems a little bit different now.’”

That wise perspective permeates Crossword Smiles’ songwriting on its sophomore release, which features 11 tracks about anticipation, disappointment, and discovery.

“I don’t think you can get away from it,” said Saam, who previously lived in Dexter and now resides in the West Michigan town of Dimondale. “If you’re making music and writing songs, some of your life is going to seep into it. There are some specific references to things like in ‘Typical Waving Goodbye.’ I lost a buddy … and I didn’t know when I was saying goodbye to him that I was saying goodbye for good.”

Those relatable experiences on Consequences & Detours quickly connect with listeners, thanks to the duo’s memorable lyrics, infectious harmonies, vivid electric guitars, and melodic instrumentation.

“We really both contributed a lot of things to each song,” said Saam, also a University of Michigan alumnus and host of the internet show Indie Pop Takeout. “It was very fulfilling for me as a musician.”

The musicianship extends to the arrangements, too, which feature violin, mandolin, trumpet, and accordion to augment the core of guitar, bass, and drums.

“We purposely went after different sonic touches on every song if we could,” Curless said.

I recently spoke with Curless and Sam about the album ahead of a May 31 show at Trinity House Theatre in Livonia.

Q: The album’s title comes from the lyric “it’s consequences and detours” in the song “Millicent.” How did it lead to the album’s title? 
Chip Saam (CS): Honestly, there was a different name for the record going into it, and we sent the demos and rough mixes to Rex [Broome] and Christina [Bulbenko] at Big Stir Records. Their first response back to us, they said, “You should call it Consequences & Detours,” and we said, “Huh? Yeah, we like that!”

It’s like naming a band … you’re back and forth, and three weeks later, you say, “Oh my gosh, what are we going to call it?” As soon as somebody says it, all of a sudden you’ll say, “That’s it!” We were gonna call it Peninsula Ink. The Go-Betweens and The Chills have [a naming convention] with their record titles. The Chills have “SB,” like “Snow Bound” and “Silver Bullets,”  and The Go-Betweens have two “LLs,” like Tallulah and 16 Lovers Lane. We were trying to start something like that, so we were sticking with “P” and “I,” like with [our previous album], Pressed & Ironed. But the [new] title, Consequences & Detours, overrode it pretty quickly.

Tom Curless (TC): As soon as they said that, we both said, “Yeah, that’s it—that’s a great title.” I think we were overthinking [the original album title] a little bit. We talk about this a lot. As artists, you’re so involved and ingrained in the record, that sometimes you need other people to tell you things. We live it every day, we need somebody with fresh ears.

Q: “Counting by Fives” highlights meeting someone new and becoming infatuated with them. How did you channel feelings of wonder and anticipation while writing this track? 
CS: It’s a song about that wonderment and freshness of a new somebody you really want and that you’ve started this relationship with. You’re counting by fives so it’s faster. The concept is like, “I’m counting by fives, so hurry up. I’ll get to see you sooner than if I’m not counting by fives.” I had an acoustic guitar and said, “I’m gonna write me a Grant McLennan tune.” I came up with [the lyric] “in the bright orange lights,” and said, “OK, there it is. That’s a start.”

This one also has one of my favorite lyrics of Tom’s that sold it for me, and it was, “I saw you last night / In a long black coat / You made me laugh.” It took me back to when you’re younger, and you’re trying to be somebody you’re not. The long black coats and whatever you were doing, it was a very melancholy thing for me—it fit perfectly.

Q: “Falling All Over Myself” examines forewarning someone, yet being met with indifference. How did a past intervention with someone inspire the song’s theme? 
CS: Just like “Counting by Fives,” I had a start to it, and Tom took it over and across the finish line. In terms of losing people, I had a friend who unfortunately took his own life. It’s saying, “I’m trying to help you out here … and trying to get through to you and get you to a better place,” [but] it doesn’t always work out.

After Tom pulled [the song idea] out of the folder, I said, “Hey, there’s a Teenage Fanclub song, and I’d like to put the sonic template of that onto this [song].” He ran with it and listened to the song, but I’m not sure how much that inspired him. He came back with this Guided by Voices guitar riff, and as soon as I heard it, my eyes got big. I texted him and said, “Holy crap! That’s perfect.” I think I had the majority of the lyrics down for this [song], but Tom came up with a verse I loved and that’s what we turned into the outro.

Q: “Millicent” is a tale about searching for someone who doesn’t want to be found. What inspired the character of Millicent and her desire to escape? 
CS: I would say it’s an amalgamation of [people]. There’s not a certain story. We got the first couple of lines lyric-wise and then creativeness, fiction, and memory took over, and we pieced together little things. The whole song started with the lyric, “To what extent are you real?” Once I had that rhyme and that lyric, the rest of it took care of itself. I came to Tom and said, “For this one, I’d like to try and put this Michael Penn [feel] on it.”

Fortunately, we were able to get Timothy Monger to play the accordion. We got him through Geoff Michael at Big Sky [Recording]. Tom reached out to Geoff and said, “Do you happen to know any accordion players?” And he said, “As a matter of fact, I do.”

Tom [later] pulled out his mandolin and laid it down for this song. It also has one of my favorite vocals of Tom’s on the record and that’s his daughter [Madeline Curless] that he’s singing with on it. It made it even more heartwarming for me, it was a goosebumpy kind of thing.

Q: “Night Train” explores feeling defeated and scared about the future. How does it serve as a vehicle for people facing disappointments and failures? 
CS: For me, it’s literally [about] people on a train. You’re on a train, and you could just look at people and see how life has beaten them up. The crux of it was the chorus with these people having gone out and failed and coming home with, as Tom called it, “a suitcase full of tries.” Tom also added the lyric about the “conductors popping purple pills.” He thought about somebody trying to stay awake.

TC: With the breadth of people you see on a train just looking around … I think that was the vibe I got—especially on a late-night train.

Q: “Once or Twice” depicts a wife mourning the death of her husband and preparing to join him in the afterlife. How did your experiences with grief inspire this track? 
TC: That was the oldest song on the record. This was almost the opposite of what most of the songs were. Chip took an idea of mine and ran with it. It definitely has a mournful feel to it.

CS: Tom had the musical part, and he had the chorus of “Running backwards darling / Throwing rice.” I liked the music so much that I said, “Hey, can I grab this and come up with a melody and verse?” I lost my mom eight years ago, and I’m sure there was some element of that in there.

I also reference favorite songwriters and inspirations [a lot]. I keep saying Grant McLennan, [and] Michael Penn is somebody that comes up. McLennan puts great characters in his songs, and so that was an inspiration for that.

Q: “Kismet” acknowledges finding a fateful connection and celebrating the euphoria it elicits. How did the lyrics contribute to the track’s magical feeling? 
CS: A lot of these songs that were sitting in this folder of mine were things I had written as part of The Hangabouts. I was putting things in for when we do the next Hangabouts record. This is truly one that I presented to them … and it never got any traction.

The bit about “in the corner of my eye” is something that I hung onto and said, “I think that’s a great freakin’ lyric. How can I make that work into a song?” The bit about “we didn’t plan to build the Taj Mahal” was another lyric … and that lyric came about [when] I was in my garage making some shelves with a buddy, and he said, “We didn’t plan to build a Taj Mahal, but there you go.” I was running into the house to get a pen and to scribble it down to save it for something. That’s one of my favorite ones on there, and that’s the one that Tom and I both sing on. I think we sound good together.

Q: The songs for Consequences & Detours started as ideas written down in a folder. How did the ideas grow into 11 tracks for the album? 
CS: Tom went through it, and [the] things that hit him, he yanked out of that folder, and then he developed them a lot. In some cases, it was entirely beyond a three-chord strum, and in some cases, beyond a lyric idea in your phone. He did a lot of work creating things from these little ideas.

TC: I called it the Chip archive because [he] had all these mini ideas. Sometimes it could be humming into the phone, and sometimes it could be a couple of chords and some lyrics. If he had an idea that popped into his head, he would put it down. He had this huge folder of ideas and it was such a great thing because … it started a lot of the songs on this record. If something would hit me, then I’d say, “How can I expand on that? How can we make this a song?” I took it as a challenge to present it and say, “Hey, Chip, check this out. Look what I did!” And then he’d say, “Oh, sweet!” and we’d take it from there. This album was collaborative from ground zero.

Q: You co-wrote “Navigator Heart” with longtime collaborators Greg Addington and John Lowry. What did they help bring to that song? 
CS: We know those guys very well; I go way back with Greg. We know each other well enough to say, “Hey, this is OK, but this could be a better song. How about if we did this?” It [had] the biggest influence from other folks.

TC: John and Greg are good friends of ours, and we respect them musically as well. To take them something and say, “OK, here’s what we have,” and in your head, you’re thinking, “OK, this is what I’m thinking.” And then they’ll take it and say, “Wait, what about this? What about that?” In the end, it turned out to be a much better song.

Q: You recorded the tracks for the album at several studios. How did they come together during the recording process? 
TC: Last spring was the beginning of the recording process because we were writing before that though. We did a little bit at my house [in Grand Blanc] because I have a studio. We did “Navigator Heart” at [John Lowry’s] Earth Studio [in Whitmore Lake].

CS: We did some at Greg Addington’s [home studio] … they call it Earth Satellite [in Hamburg] because he lives so close to John Lowry. We did “Kismet” there. “Girls Club” and “Counting by Fives” we did in Tom’s basement. We did two all-day sessions at Joel Boyea’s Dungeon Studios in Marshall. Working with Joel is a lot of fun … we can fling things at Joel and say, “Hey, can you try and come up with something for this?” He’s usually more than capable of coming up with things.

Q: Two tracks, “Counting by Fives” and “Girls Club,” were recorded and added to the album later in the creative process. Why did you replace your cover of Depeche Mode’s “Puppets” with those two songs on Consequences & Detours? 
CS: We had nine songs done for the record, and we were gonna put the Depeche Mode cover, [“Puppets”], on the record to make it 10. We got stuff done, and we had a couple of weeks before we had to turn stuff into [Big Stir Records]. Tom said, “Hey, we got two weeks. That’s a lot of time, so let’s record a couple of tracks for bonus material.”

We recorded “Counting by Fives” and “Girls Club” in those two weeks. By the end of it, we thought, “Hey, wait a minute, that Depeche Mode track just got cut from the list.” That’s why we released that as a single and put these other two songs on there.

Q: Consequences & Detours also features collaborations with Timothy Monger (accordion), Rod Capps (violin), Dave Caruso (keys), Lenny Grassa (guitar), David Baldwin (trumpet), and Madeline Curless (vocals). Collectively, how did they help shape the album’s sound? 
CS: We’ve been super fortunate—because Caruso, Monger, Capps—we gave them the tracks and the freedom to do what they wanted to do. And we may have thrown an idea or two to them, but they executed superbly on all accounts.

All I did with Caruso was say, “I’m hearing a harpsichord-y, Left Banke kind of thing, and bam, there it was.” Lenny Grassa is playing guitar on “Counting by Fives,” and he does the solo. We did that in Tom’s basement—that was fun. We had a trumpet on “Night Train,” too, and that’s another example of an outside person [David Baldwin] doing exactly what you were hoping. He killed it. He’s a guitar player, and he’s one of those people who can do a lot of different things. He also did the trumpet on [our] Depeche Mode cover of “Puppets.”

Q: What plans do you have for your sold-out May 31 album release show at Livonia’s Trinity House Theatre? 
TC: We’re working through a lot of songs right now, trying to get them down and tight. We’re going to do a mini acoustic set and do a couple of songs where we go to the front of the stage and sit on stools. We’re excited to have Nick Piunti opening the show, and he’s gonna play acoustic for 30 minutes. For our band, we have David Baldwin on trumpet, guitar, and keys and Ted Bishop on drums. Rehearsals have been going well, and we’re excited.

CS: We’re not gonna do every song on the new record. This time, we have five or six [songs] off of Pressed & Ironed. We’re gonna do seven or eight [songs] off of the new one and do a couple of choice covers as well. We’re going to have some special guests.

Q: What’s up next for you later this year? 
CS: We’re working on a Lansing show. We’re [also] hoping to snag a Detroit show and trying to do some different locales. We just wrapped up recording a track for something Big Stir is going to release in the fall outside of this [album].

Lori Stratton is a library technician, writer for Pulp, and writer and editor of strattonsetlist.com.

Crossword Smiles perform May 31 with Nick Piunti at Trinity House Theatre, 38840 West Six Mile Road, Livonia. The show is sold out.