{"id":24548,"date":"2023-01-28T05:30:05","date_gmt":"2023-01-28T10:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=24548"},"modified":"2022-12-15T12:11:08","modified_gmt":"2022-12-15T17:11:08","slug":"album-review-crossword-smiles-pressed-ironed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2023\/01\/28\/album-review-crossword-smiles-pressed-ironed\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Crossword Smiles &#8212; Pressed &#038; Ironed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-24549\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/crossword_smiles.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/crossword_smiles.jpg 350w, https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/crossword_smiles-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/crossword_smiles-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/>Breezy, tuneful and possessing enough grit to set the music apart from standard-issue power poppers, Crossword Smiles craft solid, memorable tunes. The arrangements are uncluttered on these guitar-based riff rockers. Soaring vocal harmonies of the dual-lead variety figure in many of the songs; the music is carefully assembled and delivered in a heartfelt manner.<\/p>\n<p>The group (really Tom Curless and Chipper Saam plus guests) has a pleasing sonic character throughout <i>Pressed &amp; Ironed<\/i>, and Curless and Saam \u2013 who co-write all of the material \u2013 have a good sense of variety built into their craft. \u201cThis Little Town\u201d is built around Rod Capps\u2019 violin and viola, but it still rocks, and it fits nicely into the mix.<\/p>\n<p>Melancholia finds its way into the album at several points, most notably on \u201cOctober Leaves.\u201d The duo\u2019s thoughtful songwriting provides the kind of emotional heft that\u2019s sometimes absent from the always-grinning type of rock outfits that dot the musical landscape. Crossword Smiles rarely sounds explicitly like another group, though the familiar beat and electric piano textures of \u201cParallel Lines\u201d will immediately bring to mind the Zombies. \u201cThe Girl With a Penchant for Yellow\u201d has a vaguely Who-like feel, especially in its Curless\u2019 drumwork on the intro), but the brief song itself leans more toward Merseybeat (with a bit of ELO-ish Vocoder).<\/p>\n<p>Shimmering acoustic guitars dominate on \u201cWhere\u2019s the Sense\u201d and \u201cWalk Softly.\u201d And power-chording electric guitar characterizes \u201cLotus.\u201d The point being that Crossword Smiles never, ever write the same song twice, or use the same arrangement ideas twice. There\u2019s a definite cohesiveness to the ten songs \u2013 they truly sound like they belong together on an album \u2013 but variety remains at the core of what this outfit does.<\/p>\n<p><em>Pressed &amp; Ironed<\/em> is as tidy a collection as its title suggests; it\u2019s a winner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Breezy, tuneful and possessing enough grit to set the music apart from standard-issue power poppers, Crossword Smiles craft solid, memorable tunes. The arrangements are uncluttered on these guitar-based riff rockers. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24549,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,55,62,65],"tags":[5029],"class_list":["post-24548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-release","category-powerpop","category-rawk","category-review","tag-crossword-smiles","cat-49-id","cat-55-id","cat-62-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24548"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24550,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24548\/revisions\/24550"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}