Meditative third album that dwells on love, faith and nature.
Country music was grown in the fields of Appalachia. S.G. Goodman is from Kentucky farmer stock, and she recorded this third album in Alabama. The tempo feels uniform across several tracks, which enforces a sonic unity across the album and makes it good to sit and listen to late at night.
‘Satellite’ kicks off the album with some punchy guitars and talk of “kingdom come”. ‘I Can See the Devil’ and ‘Fire Sign’ (“I’m a dreamer with no answers”) both benefit from layered harmony vocals and a driving rhythm which will help them impress crowds during a live show.
‘Snapping Turtle’, a creature which gives the album its striking cover image, is inspired by Goodman’s time in therapy: she recounts memories of friends, her travels and “small towns where my mind gets stuck”. ‘Nature’s Child’ brings in Will Oldham aka Bonnie Prince Billy, who adds gravitas (“come as you are unto me”) to a song where she croons “yippie-yo” amid backmasked guitar lines.
Over an elegant electric guitar line, Goodman sings the ballad ‘Solitaire’ (“here’s the flop and the turn”) to a river, with a tremulous vocal that, as it does across the whole project, recalls those of Cat Power. On the happier ‘I’m in Love’, she is “crying at commercials”, dancing in the kitchen, “singing into the spoon”, and shopping for new underwear, but she sets her words over quiet musical backing as if she’s scared to boast too much about her feelings. ‘Heat Lightning’, on which she sings the lyrics near the top of her range, also dwells on love, with atmospheric washes of sound and a breakdown into an indistinct spoken word section. It feels like the listener is eavesdropping.
The upbeat title track has off-the-beat guitar strums, and it’s the closest thing on the album to a folk song; the lyric about “planting our love” dwells on the constellations (“Orion’s chasing the dogs…plastic stars on my bedroom ceiling”). The song features guitarist and co-producer Matthew Rowan, who harmonises expertly with Goodman much as Oldham had done earlier. ‘Michael Told Me’ (“we could handle it”) is a tribute to Goodman’s late friend and mentor, who advised her that her friendship with Rowan would be repaired.
The nine-minute closing track ‘Heaven Song’ is a picaresque road trip inspired, Goodman has said, by the same verse which gave The Byrds “Turn Turn Turn”. The story brings in characters whom Goodman and friends pick up on a trip around town or, as in the case of Jesus, meet in a bar. For the refrain, she sings, “Maybe if I see it, then I want it”, which may be a reference to faith. In the final few minutes of the track, she lets go and sings all the way up to heaven, ending the otherwise introspective album with a cathartic flourish.
