Argentinum Astrum,Malleus Maleficarum (Anti-Corp/Forcefield/Inherent)
Knoxville, Tennessee, may not have the flashy musical legacy of its boot-scootin’ cousin, but it does have Argentinum Astrum. Four years after its most recent demo, this Marble City metal band has finally surfaced with a new album, a three-song opus whose charred black melodies, pulverizing doom, and hellish throat-scraping invocations oscillate between nightmarish and engrossing. The first track is a pained, droning slog through enemy territory, but a newfound reliance on black-metal tropes (and a surprisingly European sensibility) serves the band well throughout the second and third legs of the journey. Malleus Maleficarum sounds as though it were recorded in a burial vault; shrapnel blasts of orthodox black-metal tremolo picking ricochet through its echo chamber and smother icy, ingenious harmonies beneath harsh distortion. It’s a harrowing listen but an essential reintroduction to one of the dirty south’s best-kept secrets. —Kim Kelly
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Joan of Arc front man Tim Kinsella gets top billing on Tim Kinsella Sings the Songs of Marvin Tate by LeRoy Bach Featuring Angel Olsen, but this collaborative album is the brainchild of Chicago poet Marvin Tate and multi-instrumentalist LeRoy Bach, who’s played in Tate’s wild, weird funk band, D-Settlement. Tate wrote the words, Bach composed the music, Kinsella sings, and Olsen occasionally contributes backing vocals (on “Sidetracked in Miami” she takes the lead herself). The charmingly simple album that results is mostly sweet but sometimes fierce—on the bent bar-rock number “Idolize,” Kinsella blurts out the hook over clanging piano. Kinsella and Olsen deliver Tate’s lyrics affectionately, and Bach’s often minimalist instrumentation gives the music a childlike quality reminiscent of old K Records twee pop. Kinsella plays with Joan of Arc at the Hideout on Fri 12/20. —Leor Galil
Kirk Knuffke, Chorale (Steeplechase)
Erudite and unflashy New York trumpeter Kirk Knuffke has interpreted compositions by a diversity of jazz greats: he plays in Steve Lacy repertory quartet Ideal Bread, and he’s made a series of recordings with pianist Jesse Stacken that tackle pieces by the likes of Ellington, Monk, and Mingus. But the recent Chorale—a freebop quartet session with pianist Russ Lossing, bassist Michael Formanek, and drummer Billy Hart—consists entirely of originals. Knuffke’s compositional approaches are as varied as the material he’s previously covered: three tunes come from his Book of M repertoire, a collection of musical schematics whose harmonic movements and melodies are improvised on the spot; “Wingy,” the opening cut, builds on a terse quote from a recording by trumpeter Wingy Manone; and some songs draw inspiration from broader aesthetic notions, such as the angularity in Monk’s writing. No matter how a piece arose, though, this alert and sensitive band delivers an elegantly proportioned performance full of unpredictable interactions. —Peter Margasak
Ms. Jody,It’s All About Me! (Ecko)
Ms. Jody is probably the most popular female artist in contemporary southern soul-blues, and It’s All About Me! captures her at the height of her powers, having toned down her trademark raunch in favor of worldly meditations on love, lust, fidelity, and betrayal. The title song casts her as a sort of juke-joint Oprah, counseling women on how to maintain their self-esteem in relationships; by contrast, “One Hour Baby” is a noirish tale of illicit love, and the propulsive blues-rock number “Every Woman for Herself” is the shameless boast of a man stealer. “I Apologize,” a parable about a guilt-racked man admitting the error of his ways, is all the more moving for its ambiguous conclusion: the woman telling the tale forgives the reprobate and even cradles his head in her arms, but she gives no indication that she’ll take him back. Jody’s voice is sure-timbered and powerful, and the production is robust, albeit somewhat pedestrian by mainstream R&B standards; even generic dance-floor workouts such as “Ms. Jody’s Boogie Slide” and “The Rock” sound club-friendly and inviting. —David Whiteis
Burkhard Stangl, Unfinished. For William Turner, Painter. (Touch)
Austrian experimental guitarist Burkhard Stangl (Polwechsel) stumbled upon the work of 18th-century painter William Turner on his first visit to London’s Tate Gallery in 2003, and he says he was inspired by the artist’s work, especially some of his later, unfinished paintings. The three solo guitar pieces on Unfinished—elliptical, minimalist, and augmented with atmospheric field recordings—don’t directly address Turner’s art. Instead, these resonant meditations seem to correlate to what Stangl has described as the painter’s play with light, air, water, and stillness. Not much happens, but Stangle summons a gorgeous ambience, scuffed by seemingly inadvertent string scrapes—and the sounds shimmer and undulate as if adrift on the waves or buoyed by the breeze. —Peter Margasak
