Lafayette blues rocker Michael Juan Nunez doesn’t waste any time in getting to the meat of the matter on American Electric, his third carefully crafted release in a decade. On the blitzkrieg opening track alone (“Punks Like You”), his protagonist averts a bloodbath by standing up to a drunken bully. It’s intense and sets the tone for an album that includes “Doney,” a Delta blues-styled song that includes a grisly double murder. “Dirty Politics” finds Matt Perrine’s funky tuba flooding the bottom end as Nunez personifies corruption as a universal networking fiend.

Regardless of the subject, he rarely lets up on the throttle, shifting through bombastic shakers, bluesy romps and sweet, greasy soul. Nunez does so without succumbing to convention. Whereas most would enlist a guest accordionist on a zydeco-theme song, “Coming Home” is an eerie, mystical illustration with gospel-ish, séance overtones and not a squeezebox in sight. A faint background voice seemingly from the hinterland utters, “They bounced this way; they bounced that way” as if it were a dream.

Nunez is a tasteful slide guitarist with bountiful fireball licks, but American Electric is not a guitar hero album. His playing and creative producing skills are part of a turbo-charged package that dovetails neatly within the confines of his songs—besides being one that rocks you silly.