Marc Ribot’s guitar playing has skittering between noise and poise for nearly 20 years. But rarely on the same album, and certainly never on one framed by the sound of acoustic guitar. Still, the Newark-born musician’s latest disc, Saints (Atlantic), is less a departure than a unification of the ideas he has explored. It’s also a notice to listeners who’ve recently tuned in to his work that there’s more to Ribot than the smart, relaxed arrangements of Latin music he recorded on his two bestselling CDs, 1998’s Marc Ribot y los Cubanos Postizos and 2000’s ¡Muy Divertido! (both also on Atlantic).

That’s obvious from the opening track, Albert Ayler’s 'Saints.' Ribot, who’ll perform alone — as he does on the CD — at Johnny D’s in Somerville’s Davis Square next Thursday, uses finger vibrato to mimic the sustained, breathy notes of the avant-garde saxist’s original performance, and he runs through rubbery descending lines that conjure the spirit of Ayler’s squalling melodies while embracing the very guitaristic technique of hammering on the fretboard to produce that sound. Extended technique — long a part of the improvisers’ handbook — turns up all over the disc in unpredictable ways. Ribot pulls blunt pinging notes from his instrument by plucking above the nut in 'Pencil.' And his unrecognizable rearrangement of the gospel number 'Holy Holy Holy' devotes a long passage to detuned strings and the random, slippery picking perfected by the father of avant-garde guitar, Derek Bailey, as Ribot vocalizes like a whining teakettle in the background.

Generous melodies abound too. John Lurie’s 'It Could Have Been Very Very Beautiful' teams a bluesy lead line with a bass-note pulse, pausing several times to shift between minor and major feels, ending with a lovely diminuendo that splits the difference between the Mississippi Delta and Havana. The standard 'I’m Confessin’ (That I Love You)' sticks slowly to the pretty contours of its tune. There’s also a beguiling ode to the Beatles: Ribot quotes melody lines from 'And I Love Her' and other Lennon/McCartney numbers within the structure of 'Happiness Is a Warm Gun,' slowly chiseling each note to ripe perfection.

His electric guitar snarls up out of the cosmos for his composition 'Empty.' Written with François Lardeau, it’s an exercise in sonic tectonics: waves of digital-delay-processed feedback and noise collide and overlap to give the piece a sense of swirling (outer) space. And on 'St. James Infirmary,' his electric is utterly earthbound. The walking-bass lines and jazz-blues runs, which recall the legato playing of Lonnie Johnson, wallow in the juke-joint joy of vintage-amp reverb.

All this makes for a very diverse solo performance on disc, and Ribot should have everything well polished for the stage when he arrives at Johnny D’s following a week of solo, duo, and trio gigs at the Umbria Winter Jazz Festival in Orvieto, Italy. The Orvieto dates cap a busy, sprawling year: he made the new album, held down a residency at Manhattan’s Knitting Factory performance space, and toured internationally alone, with his Cuban-music group, and with a new outfit he’s dubbed the Crackers (featuring Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Calvin Weston, Dougie Bowne, and Marc Anthony Thompson).

Ribot came up playing garage rock and studying with classical-guitarist Franz Casseus; he arrived in New York City as a sideman for jazz-organist Jack McDuff and pulled extra duty with soul singers like Wilson Pickett and Rufus Thomas. By the early ’80s, he was a fixture of the downtown Manhattan art-music scene, rubbing elbows with composers John Zorn and Elliott Sharp and playing in John Lurie’s Lounge Lizards. But it was his gig as Tom Waits’s guitarist that made a small crack in the mainstream’s doorway. To date he has played on four Waits albums (including the skewed guitar of 'Down in the Hole' and 'Hang On, St. Christopher' on Franks Wild Years), as well as on discs and tours by Elvis Costello and Marianne Faithfull.

The 46-year-old has made solo and group albums since 1990’s Rootless Cosmopolitans, but he found his largest following after Marc Ribot y los Cubanos Postizos. That album was his love affair with the music of Cuban composer and bandleader Arsenio Rodríguez, music translated from Rodríguez’s big-band arrangements for the four-piece Ribot dubbed 'Los Cubanos Postizos' (roughly, 'the prosthetic Cubans'). Before making that album’s sequel, ¡Muy Divertido!, Ribot recorded Don’t Blame Me (DIW), essentially a disc of jazz standards played on toy guitar. Saints rests in the middle ground, exploring melodies and noise with a blend of serious intent and playful execution — pushing the envelope, redrafting standards, and doing both at once on the Ayler tunes.

Fans of Ribot’s Latin music may think the disc’s final cut, Ayler’s 'Witches and Devils,' is a more apt title for this riskier album. But if Ribot is possessed by anything, it’s the notion that musicianship has no limitations.

Marc Ribot plays Johnny D’s next Thursday, January 10, with opener David Goodrich. Call (617) 776-2004.