Interview with The Crooked Smiles

Following their formation in 2018, the Sheffield, UK based three-piece The Crooked Smiles released a couple of EP's and have now released their full-length debut Tears in the Palace.  I recently had the chance to interview lead singer and guitarist Michael Rodber about the formation of the band, the new album, their future plans and alot more.  

Can you give me a bit of background on the band?

The band started in around 2018, when I met our drummer Dec in a Sheffield rock nightclub. He was loitering inconspicuously around the toilets, wearing an Alkaline Trio shirt, and I thought, “that’s a man I want to be friends with”. We got talking and drunkenly decided to form a band.  It was nothing serious at first, but the more we played, the more we got into the local scene, and the bigger the ideas we had above our station. We’ve had a lot of work to do, but since then, we’ve built an identity for our music and can’t wait to see where it all goes!

I see a lot of references to pop-punk and emo when talking about the band and while I occasionally hear that, there is a lot more to your sound with big power chords and anthemic choruses, but also more of an edge and rawness.  I really feel like just saying pop-punk and emo really shortchanges the band.  What’s your take on that?

The rawness is definitely something we try to cling on to! We take a lot of influence from the 90’s and early 00’s pop-punk and emo scenes; the likes of Alkaline Trio, The Wonder Years, Finch etc, as well as the Midwestern-emo scene in the US. Being a band in the UK in 2023, I’m not exactly sure where we fit into all that. We’re not one of those “we don’t like to compartmentalize our sound” bands, and we’re not a genre-purist band either, so I suppose we just gave up trying to give our music a label. Maybe we have short-changed ourselves?

What kind of impact has the pandemic had on the band?

I think we’ve taken quite a few positives from the pandemic. Feeling like you’ve wasted 2 years of your life really gives you a sense of urgency after you come out the other end of it, and it really gave us the kick we needed to knuckle down to create an album. We were also fueled by a lot of personal events caused by the pandemic. We all had to rebuild a sense of identity after a lot of big losses while being locked away from the world, and writing an album in the year that followed to me is like a time capsule of the progression made out of that period.

How does your songwriting process tend to work?

It varies from track to track - the bulk of songs come from throwing ideas around in our rehearsal room until something sticks. I think if there’s any strengths to our band, it comes from our drummer’s ability to write these insane, quite complex beats out of thin air. The man plays with a jazz grip for Christ’s sake, he’s not messing about. That’s always a good place to start.  On the more personal tracks, it’s come from an acoustic guitar in my bedroom, just feeling out rough chords and melodies.

Lyrically, I remember a friend telling me that Brian Sella from the Front Bottoms notes down snippets of conversations he’s had or things he’s overheard, and since I’ve tried a similar thing; any ideas I have or things I hear that I like, I note down, and over time I have a bank of ideas that I can start to piece together around a surrounding theme.

“Kick In The Sun” opens with an announcer introducing the band and it sounds like he calls you “Colon”.  Is there a story behind that?  Also I hear a little bit of The Killers in that song.  Would you agree with that?

That’s actually a sample from a 90's sketch show The Fast Show! I was watching a lot of it at the time of writing the album. In fear of explaining the joke, the sketch is essentially a bait-and-switch where an announcer hams up a heavy, gritty act, only to reveal a soft, loved-up indie band (with their song "Kick in the Sun"). Our namesake track is the only love song I’ve ever written, so we thought it’d be a nice little nod to that, and old-school comedy that we all love. The album is a complete revolution of our older sound, so the “everything you know is wrong '' seemed a fitting statement to re-introduce ourselves as the new and improved Crooked Smiles.

Sheffield is a big indie-rock city, and we all grew up going to indie gigs like Catfish and the Bottleman and The Arctic Monkeys, and The Killers are a big part of that too. You could almost guarantee that the last song played at a nightclub before closing was "Mr Brightside", so I think it’s impossible to stop that influence bleeding in.

Can you tell me about “Bedroom Eyes” and “Unforgivable Curse #3”?  Both songs have a really cool, kind of offbeat sound that sets them apart from the rest of the album.

So, the main riff in "Bedroom Eyes" was originally an idea we had as a bridge for the previous track, "The Sound of Your Intonation", but the groove in that riff felt so different to the rest of the album we thought it deserved more of a spotlight in its own track, so we did the unthinkable, and the unheard of, and made one song that transitions into another song. But yeah, "Bedroom Eyes" is just as much a self-criticism as it is a criticism of others when it comes to looking for love. Being angry at unrequited love is a cornerstone in pop-punk music, and I hoped to expand on that a little in "Bedroom Eyes". Sure, it’s okay to be disappointed and hurt when you’ve been led on, used or manipulated, but I think it’s good to take a step back and look at your own shortcomings, and why and how you misplace investment in someone who doesn't feel the same for so long.

"Unforgivable Curse" is actually a cover! It’s a track that I hold close to my heart and usually plays in my headphones on drunken walks home or in general down periods. We thought it was perfectly fitting in tone for the rest of the album, and a recurring track we play at our gigs, so we reached out and got permission to do our own rendition.

You rerecorded “Pins and Needles” and “Leeches” (previously “Leech”) for the album.  Why did you decide to revisit those tracks and do you think we will be hearing rerecorded versions of any of your other earlier tracks?

"Pins and Needles" was the first track we ever recorded and has followed us around ever since. When we first started out I’d get a bit of stick from my mates for my sub-par vocal performance, but we kept working to develop a sound we were proud of. We’d always dreamed of making a full-length album, so when that did come we thought it would only be fair to bring the track along for the ride, and hopefully do it a little more justice than the first time round! We developed such a strong bond with our producer, Heartwork, who really brought to life the sound we were going for with the album and asked if he’d do the honour of featuring on the track. It’s a blend of where we’ve come from and where we hope to go, and because of that I like to think of it as a cornerstone of the band.

"Leech" on the other hand was one of the last tracks we released pre-pandemic, and as one of our strongest songs, we used it as the groundwork for the tone of Tears in the Palace. Our sound chopped and changed, but again, it’s a breakneck track that never lets up and we wanted to revamp it with a new producer and a heavier, fuller sounding tone.

I really like “Rotting Roses”, which starts out acoustic and then about halfway through goes heavy and electric?  Can you tell me a little about that track?

Thank you! "Rotting Roses" was the last track we wrote for the album. I’ve always loved tracks that hit you with a heavy, anthemic chorus after a delicate bulk of a song, like Enter Shikari’s "Adieu". It was also a good excuse to blow out my voice after a long weekend of recording. The track is centered around the idea of loss and grief as a whole, whether it stems from a break up, or a death of a friend or family member, there’s a lot of feelings that overlap. I tried to blend a lot of imagery associated with both to try and tackle the overarching emotions of anger, acceptance, denial etc. Hopefully that comes across, and if it doesn’t, I hope people can draw similar feelings from the track.

A few of the songs have some effects and what sounds like possibly keys in the background.  What else am I hearing mixed in there?

You’re hearing all the bells and whistles. Well, there is a bell in there at least, and a lot of us fucking around (or messing around, depending on if we’re allowed to swear) with reverb, pinch harmonics and feedback. My favourite has to be the ambient noise in "Leeches", which came from pitch-shifting noise from various plug-ins - really adds to the chaos and angst in that track.

You’ve released two EP’s and now a full-length with Tears in the Palace, but I didn’t see any physical copies of any of them anywhere.  Are there copies available?

We have a boxload of CD’s for Tears in the Palace that are always available at our gigs - I’d say they’re glorified beermats, but we also have TITP beer mats for sale too. We’re looking to get these online sometime soon. We’ve also got a limited edition, special surprise release of the album coming up, but you didn’t hear that from us.

What kind of plans do you have for supporting Tears in the Palace?

We’ve spent a lot of time in the studio, out in fields recording a music video, now we’re raring to get on stage! We’ve played a few gigs since as well as an album release show - but if you’re reading this and are a gig promoter, have a house party coming up, or a wedding, a funeral, whatever. We will play. Anytime, anywhere. There’s a couple of ideas floating around too about more music videos, acoustic tracks, and more, but again, you didn’t hear that from us.

Anything else you would like to share with readers?

Keep your eyes out for us! We’re far from done after our first album. That was a shake up, but with the things we’ve got planned in the future, things are about to be shaken up even more. If you like Tears in the Palace, you’re going to want to stick around for what’s to come.  

(SODEH Records)  (The Crooked Smiles - Facebook)