S.G. Goodman: Teeth Marks
When S. G. Goodman’s lilting warble drops in on the title track of her upcoming album, “Teeth Marks,” one immediately senses the absolute deftness with which Goodman has found the cathartic vein of empathy coursing largely untapped through her listeners. The rise and fall crescendos of her “distinct warble” accompanied by the rush of soul-wasting pain and tempering moments of searing joy draw her audience in to revered silence as we listen to ethereal highs and lows brought to us on waves of new Southern Punk’s latest patron saint, who Billboard has also dubbed endearingly “the queer farmer’s daughter.”
The album has two good feet known to us as empathy and trauma. Goodman uses them to walk us through lessons in heart pains we have all experienced, but the message, mood, and tone come to us filtered through a haunted voicebox born through years of harmonizing with Goodman’s elderly church choir members while growing up in rural Appalachia. Just as her breakout album, “Old Time Feeling,” was consistently stellar from start to finish, so, too, does her upcoming 2022 offering follow suit.
The “Teeth Marks” track itself sets the cool-handed, but staunchly rebellious vibe that shapes the rest of the album’s sound, and if examined closely, is a self-contained main point for the entire body of work. At first blush, the cosmic echoes of the track seem to focus on a romantic love unrequited; however, the early lyric of her response to a lover that has left her bed after leaving teeth marks framed as “...(you’re) telling me you’re gonna bless my heart, well it is. Oh, it already is.” is layered in meaning. Being privy to the knowledge that the trauma theme present in the album isn't solely based on love lost but also on the rejection Goodman experienced and continues to experience at the hands of some members of her staunchly religious hometown community. It isn’t difficult to ascertain the defiant anger born of heart wounds outlined here as one also refers to the inability of certain demographics to support, love, and refrain from judging the personal choices of others, despite the talents, sentiments, contributions, and personal spiritual beliefs that an individual might possess.
Of her hometown community’s reception of her work, Goodman recently told Bitter Southerner “when Billboard described her as “a queer farmer’s daughter…” random people in her community “wrote to me on social media to say they were praying for me… For years before I was out, I thought if I could make something of myself, then no one could question it. I finally felt like I was doing something that people could be proud of me about, and found out that wasn’t true. I realized that there wouldn’t be any sacred moments in my life to them- any sort of accomplishment- because I‘d be doing it while gay.”
Something has gone horribly awry in the religious community if any Southern soul can creatively hone, and bravely seek to share with us, the talents they were innately born with, and then have those efforts met with unobjective rejection, a lack of appreciation for, and dismissal of their accomplishments and work based solely on a narrow and harsh assessment of their personal choices without allowing for the autonomy of the individual, especially as it applies to areas of their personal life that affect no one but themselves, and where they do not seek approval nor affirmation in the first place. How disheartening it must be to continuously be defined by one aspect or component of your life and have all others callously dismissed. How counterintuitive to ideas of grace, love, and mercy that should be so prevalent and foundational to the very sects that seem to be strangers to these themes so often instead.
The interesting aside inherent in Goodman’s upcoming album, centered around traumas experienced as a gay woman in ultra-conservative rural Kentucky, is that the cathartism in the message is relative to anyone that has experienced love, loss, and the greys of the in-between. What that might say about how we as a society judge the relationships of others bears pondering.
To focus once again on the music, and to possibly lead by example in that regard, standout tracks on this album include “Work Until I Die,” an op-ed piece drawing attention to the state of the working class and its largely unbroken generational curse of invisible servitude to a wealthier class of people. The faster tempo and insistent howl present in “All My Love is Coming Back to Me” simultaneously increases the listener’s heart rate and belief that Goodman is in fact, manifesting the return of the good she has previously released into the wild in expectation it would at some point return, albeit changed in form and function. The two-track journey of “If You Were Someone I Loved” and “You Were Someone I Loved” shines a needed light on the opioid crisis currently devastating large areas of our country, hitting especially hard regions of Kentucky that Goodman calls home. A personal favorite is “Heart Swell,” a slower, melodic, and haunting ditty conjuring visualizations of an ill-fated relationship “drifting over the centerline” during its inevitable demise but with vocals that put one in mind of drifting untethered through the heavens rather than the reality of knowingly pursuing disaster head on as outlined in the tune.
With one foot still in southern tradition and the other kicking doors wide open, It’s clear we have officially entered into S.G. Goodman’s moment. May it last a good, long while.
Teeth Marks will be available for streaming on all platforms on Friday June 3rd, 2022. For more information on Goodman and to find touring dates, visit the artist’s site at http://www.sggoodman.net.