Pressing Concerns: Tucker Riggleman & The Cheap Dates, States of Nature, The Special Pillow, Shadow Show

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It’s the start of the new week, and the first Pressing Concerns of it is taking a look at four records that came out over the last couple days: new albums from Tucker Riggleman & The Cheap Dates, States of Nature, and Shadow Show, and a new EP from The Special Pillow.

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Tucker Riggleman & the Cheap Dates – Restless Spirit

Release date: February 17th
Record label: WarHen
Genre: Alt-country, country rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Shotgun

One of the first albums I ever wrote about in Pressing Concerns was Alive and Dying Fast, the debut full-length from West Virginia country rockers Tucker Riggleman & The Cheap Dates. After serving time in bands like The Demon Beat (featuring Rozwell Kid’s Jordan Hudkins), Prison Book Club (with William Matheny and John R. Miller), and Bishops, Riggleman’s first quasi-solo effort was a sharp collection of tracks that emphasizes his strengths as a singer-songwriter, with The Cheap Dates playing to accentuate Riggleman’s sometimes heavy but always friendly writing. A follow-up to Alive and Dying Fast has been in the works for a while now–lead single “Virtue” showed up last April, and “Queen of Diamonds” (which was formally released last August) also appeared on last March’s Live at Clientele. Restless Spirit, the second Cheap Dates album, largely rounds up the contributors from last time–full-time Cheap Dates member Mason Fanning is a new addition, joining the familiar faces of drummer M. Tivis Clark, contributing vocalist Jason Brown, keyboardist/producer Duane Lundy, masterer Justin Perkins–Hudkins even contributes album artwork again for this record.

If Alive and Dying Fast was the sound of Riggleman & The Cheap Dates slowing down and displaying enough confidence in Riggleman’s writing to let it take the unquestioned center stage, Restless Spirit is where the band show that they can maintain the captivating quality of that record’s songs while also injecting just a bit more rock and roll into things. No one’s going to mistake Restless Spirit for a garage punk record, but it is very clearly an album where Riggleman’s formative alt-country and power pop influences peak through with regularity (and while Riggleman’s love of 80s post-punk/goth rock like The Cure and Echo & the Bunnymen isn’t exactly reflected in the music, it certainly informs his belief that sadness can sound big and beautiful). It all comes together in the subtly brilliant opening track “Educated”, with a chiming, jangly college rock lead guitar, a vintage alt-country-ish jaunty tempo, and Riggleman’s reminiscing but anything-but-rosy-nostalgia lyrical concerns–setting the stage for chilly country rocker “Virtue” to come barreling into the empty space.

The Cheap Dates sell Restless Spirit’s rockers impressively, and they also find a few different ways to present this side of the band. “Shotgun” is one of the most complete-sounding songs from Riggleman yet, glomming onto a polished, swaggering country-rock-power-pop tune and letting Riggleman’s self-effacing side battle it out with a less-frequently-seen confidence (for a lifer like Riggleman, it’s fitting that the key line in the chorus is “I let the music bring me back around”). Taking a different approach, the title track gets its edges across with a dark, blues-tinged, garage-y crawl–replete with organ work from Lee Carroll, it’s the closest Riggleman has come to repurposing The Cramps into something less campy and more sinister. The sung-spoken bitterness and disillusionment of “Paradise” is the Cheap Dates’ most ironclad-serious moment, but Riggleman hasn’t lost the playfulness in his writing, being just as likely to drape misfortune in a shrug and a shit-eating country grin (see “Familiar Bridge” and “Queen of Diamonds”). While the oddly harmonious synth-country closing track “Silver Tongue” feels largely like a cypher thematically, its final line rings loud and clear: “I don’t know how I’m supposed to make it / If I can’t raise a little hell”. Riggleman has more than enough experience to know that the chaos and darkness will always be hovering around–faced with this reality, why not try to take control of just a bit of it and make it into something of your own? (Bandcamp link)

States of Nature – Brighter Than Before

Release date: February 16th
Record label: Sell the Heart/Little Rocket/Epidemic
Genre: Post-punk, dance punk, post-hardcore, punk rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Brighter Than Before

States of Nature may be from Oakland, California, but they sound right out of Washington, D.C. at the turn of the century. The quartet of E. Urbach (guitar/vocals/lyrics), L. Anne (bass/vocals), D. Orason (guitar/vocals), and I. Knife (drums) introduced themselves with three EPs from 2018 and 2020, which were collected via the Songs to Sway compilation in 2021. Brighter Than Before is States of Nature’s first LP of new material, and the group do indeed spend the entirety of the record backing up their Bandcamp page’s claim that they make “a danceable hybrid of Post-Hardcore and Rock N’Roll”. It’s a record with a ton of energy, announcing from the get-go that they’ve spent time with both the fiery garage punk side of Dischord Records (a la Nation of Ulysses and The Delta 72), the sharp post-punk of Jawbox, and the danceable loudness of Q and Not U. States of Nature can be thought of as part of a small but notable wave of bands attempting to revive this sound–like Perennial and Feefawfum–although Brighter Than Before sounds a bit less “new-wave” and more “heavier punk” than either of those bands (Urbach seems to have a hardcore background, which may partially explain that).

That being said, the opening title track is both a sucker-punch piece of fuzz-punk and a dynamic piece of dance-rock in its execution. It’s a high bar of a first statement, but Brighter Than Before doesn’t flag in the rest of its opening salvo, with the propulsive post-punk-garage of “Wicked World” immediately picking up where the previous song left off, and the glam-ish stomp of “Papered News” offering up a nice (slight) change of pace right after that one. The party slows down just a bit in the record’s midsection with “Undone”, a start-stop piece of jittery indie rock with crossed-wires guitars taking influence from a subtler side of Dischord’s discography–but it resolves into a big finish, and “New Foundations” gets things back into garage rock barnstorming mode to kick off side two. The flipside of Brighter Than Before also features States of Nature at their most combustible–perhaps unsurprisingly, the song called “American Drone” is their angriest, a white-hot burner and the one song where the band lets a little bit of straight-up hardcore creep into the mix. States of Nature pull back one final time in closing track “Oh the Light”, which, if it doesn’t quite approach Lungfish-level zen-rock, still finds space for the band to be a little more deliberate than one might expect. There are plenty of surprises in Brighter Than Before, and even when States of Nature are just “playing the hits”, they still sound fresh. (Bandcamp link)

The Special Pillow – The Special Pillow Meets the Space Monster

Release date: February 16th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Psychedelic pop, psychedelic rock, college rock, indie pop
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: A Certain Level of Uncertainty

Hoboken’s The Special Pillow first appeared on this blog in 2022 when I wrote about their Mind Wipe EP, but the quartet have been at it for over two decades at this point, and bandleader/bassist Dan Cuddy has an even longer history as a member of the very underappreciated early 90s indie rock group Hypnolovewheel. When I wrote about Mind Wipe, I compared The Special Pillow to the Mekons and Yo La Tengo (the latter of which, should be noted, are contemporaries of Cuddy rather than precursors), and I stand by that, although The Special Pillow clearly have their own unique sound. The Special Pillow Meets the Space Monster, a brand new six-song EP from the band, only confirms this. Cuddy and the rest of the group (violinist/vocalist Katie Gentile, guitarist/vocalist Peter Stuart, and drummer/vocalist Eric Marc Cohen) have a sound that’s as pop-forward as it is rich and deep–breezy indie pop and folk music go hand in hand with all-in, noisy psychedelic rock, and the band’s orchestral side (aided by guest musicians Cheryl Kingan on the baritone sax and Steven Levi on the corner and valve trombone) enhances both sides of their music.

Opening track “Three on a Sundial” is the sound of The Special Pillow synthesizing their two halves to make full-sounding and hooky power pop–there are psychedelic and “chamber pop” flourishes, all in the service of something big-feeling and friendly. When The Special Pillow gear up to show off their “rock” side, the results are quite spirited, with the cruising drone-rock of “A Certain Level of Uncertainty” and the violin-aided psych-rock noir of “That’s the Way It’s Got to Be” both coming off as instant highlights. On the other end of the spectrum, Kingan’s saxophone and excellent guest vocals from Debby Schwartz help turn “Fond and Foggy” into a sharp piece of retro-feeling indie pop, while “Give Up the Ghost” digs into vintage psych-touched folk rock to create a Special Pillow version of college rock whose wistful melodies float along with plenty of patience and deliberate pacing. These days, it seems like The Special Pillow are primarily an “EP band”–their last full-length was in 2018, and this is the third EP that they’ve put out since then–but when they’re able to make pop music this adventurous and complete in twenty-minute, six-song packages like this one, why mess with a winning formula? (Bandcamp link)

Shadow Show – Fantasy Now!

Release date: February 16th
Record label: Little Cloud/Stolen Body
Genre: Garage rock, psychedelic pop, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Your Fantasy

Detroit’s Shadow Show have been around for a bit now, releasing their debut album, Silhouettes, back in 2020. Motor City garage rock groups aren’t exactly known for taking several years between releases, but that’s what the trio did–Fantasy Now!, the sophomore Shadow Show full-length, arrives almost exactly four years after their first LP. The new album feels like time well spent nonetheless–Fantasy Now! is inspired by immediate genres of music like 60s pop and garage rock, sure, but it’s also a multi-layered, surprisingly busy album which took me a few listens to wrap my head around. The band (guitarist Ava East, bassist Kate Derringer, and drummer Kerrigan Pearce) are not the first to slip some vintage psychedelia into this kind of music, but Shadow Show let the stranger aspects of their sound take the reins fairly frequently throughout the record’s dozen tracks and 40 minutes. All the while though, they keep Fantasy Now! within the confines of pop rock, creating an interesting push and pull dynamic that rewards repeat listening. 

For Shadow Show’s dexterity, look no further than the record’s opening two tracks: “Your Fantasy”, a jangly piece of psych pop and rock and roll and “The Madrigal”, an acapella, harmonic song that actually lives up to its title and sounds closer to a fantasy novel than the “fantasy” described in the song preceding it. Although nothing else on Fantasy Now! is quite as stark as “The Madrigal”, tracks like “Illusions”, “Clown Song”, and “Wizard’s Harp” keeping the psychedelic and “fantasy” elements in the foreground throughout the record. On the other hand, Shadow Show still find plenty of time to lean into the “rock” part of garage rock, as “Vertigo”, “Fell into a Spell”, and “Still a Day” assert, and the “pop” end of psychedelic pop is on full display in the Beatles-y “Aunt Maizy” and jaunty closing track “On a Cloud”. Of course, not everything is so cleanly divided as this might make it sound–regardless of the dominant strain in any particular song, one should expect to find some proportion of psychedelia, pop, and rock and roll throughout Fantasy Now!. You might miss something if you just let it run together, sure, but you can always just listen again to catch it. (Bandcamp link)

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