S.G. Goodman leaves 'Teeth Marks' in Southern stereotypes

Editor's note: This interview includes some discussion of suicidal thoughts.

Before the release of her second album, Teeth Marks, S.G. Goodman was openly dreading an obligation that she knew lay ahead of her: explaining her music, and by implication, her life, to interviewers. She'd done only one round of that before, when she released her debut, Old Time Feeling, during the summer of 2020. But what she lacked in direct experience with the contrived rituals of promotional cycles, she made up for in canny insight — having seen enough media portrayals of Southerners, rural dwellers and working people to know how frequently they devolve into superficial caricature. Musing out loud during an opening set in Nashville this spring, she deadpanned that perhaps she'd tell every single journalist that Alan Jackson is her sole influence and see how it played.

Jokes aside, Goodman isn't one to boil down complexity. You won't sense any sort of neat template behind the Kentucky artist's new set of songs. They're refined in a recalcitrant way, and put across with wiry but emotionally present resolve. Her singing has the cutting