Selwyn Birchwood makes his third Alligator Records album a muscular musical statement. A singer-songwriter who plays slicing electric and lap steel guitar, the dynamic young bluesman from Orlando, Florida, also wrote all the album’s songs and horn section-enhanced arrangements.

The title track “Living in a Burning House” crackles like a horror movie, though the plot is condensed into a four-minute blues-rock song. Singing in a reedy, gruff voice that sounds like no one else in the blues-rock milieu, Birchwood entraps himself in a bad relationship that’s raging like a housefire. “My heart says leave, but my legs won’t let me,” he sings.

Pain and stress are also afoot in “I Got Drunk, Laid and Stoned.” “My baby hurt me to my soul, she cut me to the bone—I’ll tell you what happened,” Birchwood teases in this cheating song with a twist. Moving to the sunnier side of life, Birchwood celebrates in “I’d Climb Mountains,” declaring, singing above soulful horns and a big beat, his epic devotion to the one he loves.

Classification as a blues artist may be convenient for Birchwood, but his range goes well beyond that. Gospel uplift powers the can’t-keep-me-down sentiment of “You Can’t Steal My Shine.” And elements of funk and even progressive jazz makes “Revelation” much more than just another blues-rock song.

Not everything Birchwood creates—the oddly off-kilter “She’s a Dime,” for example—coalesces, but more often than not he succeeds at being both bold and cohesive.