“If I’m not back tomorrow / Won’t you please be concerned? / I’m just practicing my sorrow / Like it’s another virtue I earned.” Tucker Riggleman and his Cheap Dates, who recall the Old 97’s, are back with their sad cocktails lit on fire. The album starts out with the song “Educated,” (“I was born in the backwoods / Tried to change the way / I pronounce my words / A failed attempt to sound educated,”) and his bare all storytelling, chronicle the life of a musician who never seems to get his break, a man with his share of ghosts but also stars in his eyes, a “Restless Spirit,” the title of the record and a satisfying bluesy, gothic number finishing side one.
Tucker Riggleman has an alt-country drawl that grows on you with multiple listens, his vocal lines dripping with a deadpan sadness and weariness, like a man who’s seen too much. But the guitars are always bright and jangly, along with the frequent keys and keyboards on the album. And his lyrics are salted with optimism, nonetheless. “And I’m just a labor of love / And I’m a golden gift from above.”
He’s a “sinner and a son,” with a telecaster in his hand, playing “300 shows / back to back in a fucking row” but “all the big shots trying half as hard / they’re gonna make it twice as far / as me and my country loving boys.” Whether it’s his self-referential stories about music (“I let the music bring me back around”) or his witty and deep-feelings songs about the people in his life, like “Queen of Diamonds,” (“She’s a blooming lily / and I’m just an old sticker bush”), he shares his life in compelling alt-country tunes that is pretty sure to get you on the Cheap Dates bandwagon. I’m certainly glad to hear another great album coming from their direction.
Prism Reviews 