S.G. Goodman main page

S.G. Goodman Feels the Sting of Unrequited Love in New Song ‘Teeth Marks’

[Rolling Stone]

Title track off the Kentucky songwriter’s upcoming album was inspired by her dating life as a queer woman


By JON FREEMAN 

S.G. Goodman feels the lingering impression of someone who didn’t return her love in “Teeth Marks,” the first preview and title track of the Kentucky singer-songwriter and activist‘s follow-up to 2020’s Old Time Feeling. Teeth Marks will be released June 3 via Verve Forecast.

As a fingerstyle electric guitar picks out a vaguely country rhythm, Goodman launches a wounded plea at an unavailable lover. “Well I laughed a bit when you pulled that card/tellin’ me you’re gonna bless my heart/Well it is, it already is,” she sings. Verses and choruses collide with instrumental passages of ethereal beauty, the clouds of ringing feedback calling to mind the mellower side of Yo La Tengo. Later Goodman throws up her hands in exasperation, her voice glasslike and flecked with pain as she sings, “Ain’t no use saying that/Maybe in time, you’ll see things my way.”

“This is a song about the phantom limb of love: a condition in which a lover’s mind is deluded and we make the mistake of taking a step forward, only to fall face-first into the reality of another’s heart,” Goodman says of “Teeth Marks.” “A reality we are unwilling to accept — a land of false promise we find ourselves not equipped to walk in.”

Inspired by her dating life as a queer woman and the experience of unrequited love, “Teeth Marks” is one of several new songs that deal with the ways love permanently etches its way into our being. Ahead of the album’s release, Goodman is set to play a handful of showcases at SXSW, before opening select dates for Jason Isbell and Son Volt. At the end of summer, she’ll join up with John Moreland for several West Coast stops.

Teeth Marks track list:

  1. “Teeth Marks”
  2. “All My Love Is Coming Back to Me”
  3. “Heart Swell”
  4. “When You Say It”
  5. “If You Were Someone I Loved”
  6. “You Were Someone I Loved”
  7. “Work Until I Die”
  8. “The Heart of It”
  9. “Dead Soldiers”
  10. “Patron Saint of the Dollar Store”
  11. “Keeper of the Time”