The first two albums from this side project for Jon Spencer Blues Explosion guitarist Judah Bauer were shotgun weddings — awkward unions of the drone ’n’ slash sound of Mississippi hill-country blues to junkyard rock and roll. This time Bauer gets it right, maintaining blues signifiers and themes like slide guitar and stories about cutting 78s for H.C. Speir but falling hard on the side of primal rock. The result is something like Let It Bleed–era Stones.

Yet these 15 tunes have their own dusty charisma thanks to Bauer’s dry, nasal singing and his choppy, chordal rhythm/lead playing, which has advanced from a blur of distortion and power strumming to a clean, cogent force that drives the music. His trebly guitar lines underscore the want in "Well, Well, Well" and bring out previously unheard strains of mountain folk that echo the stark potency of figures like Dock Boggs (especially in "Only One"). Even when he pays tribute to Bo Diddley in "Streets & Lights," the crashing rhythms stay clean and his voice is trimmed to the melody. So now with their own distinctive sound, Twenty Miles have become Dr. Jekyll to the Blues Explosion’s Mr. Hyde, drenched in tunefulness and sincerity. Even the brief instrumental "Like a Rock," with its gospel slide-guitar tones and acoustic six-string chassis, has the ring of proud, honest expression. And it all sounds like more than just a case of third time lucky.