S.G. Goodman - Planting by the Signs Review
After relentless touring and overcoming personal tragedy, S.G. Goodman turns her analytical eye inwards on her latest album, in search of connection.
S.G. Goodman knows how to tell a story. Her 2022 album, Teeth Marks, was full of tales of ordinary lives that unfold in often unremarkable places. The characters in Teeth Marks provided Goodman with a lens in which to illuminate and interrogate topics much larger than any life: religion, economic systems, addiction, love. But after two relentless years of touring Goodman has flipped that approach on its head. Planting by the Signs feels like a deliberate attempt to reconnect to her surroundings.
The opening track “Satellites” sees Goodman target the technology that dulls awareness and often gives the pretence of connection. The song is propped up with a steady thud of drum that sounds like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Gold Lion if it was dragging itself towards a confessional booth. Goodman’s voice is deep and unhurried, its lull pulling you closer and slowing time down. Much of the album is sung in this tone, as if Goodman is working out what she wants to say a fraction of a second before she says it - think of Kurt Vile with a straighter back.
The slowed pace of Goodman’s vocal coupled with the stoic drum beat that grounds much of the record gives the album a sombre tone, and sheds much of the rollick that was on Teeth Marks. The album feels more serious in tone, one to sit with rather than run to. But that is perhaps understandable given the burnout Goodman had from touring and the personal tragedy that existed alongside its creation. On one of the album’s standout tracks, “Michael Told Me”, Goodman describes the moment she found out that one of her closest friends, someone she refers to simply as Mike, had died when a tree fell on top of him while Goodman was on tour. Mike’s death reunited Goodman with Matthew Rowan, a key figure in shaping her earlier sound. The two parted ways after a creative split but find themselves reunited on “Planting by the Signs”, a fireside duet that acknowledges the universe’s role in reigniting their friendship.
The unknown fissures of fate are interrogated by Goodman on one of the album’s best songs - “Snapping Turtle”. Her gaze turns inwards as the song unfolds like a short story. Goodman stops her truck after seeing a group of kids “beating the hell out of” a snapping turtle. In an act of secondhand vengeance, she turns the violence back on them. What follows is a meditation on opportunity - the kind afforded to her, and the kind those kids may never receive. Over a hazy jangle of guitars, by the song’s end Goodman realises the role luck plays in any life.
It is in these insular moments, where it sounds like Goodman is talking to herself more than anyone else, that Planting by the Signs excels. On “I’m in Love” she is charting a change with great specificity - she’s singing into a spoon, checking out underwear in Walmart and trespassing in her neighbour’s pools. It’s like The White Stripes’ “We’re Gonna be Friends” if you were to write it and sing it about yourself. On “Solitaire” she unlocks the album’s message when she sings ‘You’re bound to lose, if you bet against yourself’ against a slow, sloping twinkle of guitar. If Planting by the Signs is a search for connection, in these songs S.G. Goodman shows us that the most important connection is the one with yourself.