The album title Ace certainly does justice to Aussie-born jazz guitar virtuoso Ben Eunson, but it’s also a band acronym, a mind-meld of drummer Kush Abadey, bassist Alexander Claffy, and Eunson himself, featured here as a leader but in a highly collaborative spirit. On the instrument, Eunson is possessed of full-on Olympian chops and technical facility, with a biting Stratocaster tone and complex post-bebop vernacular reminiscent of Scott Henderson. Yet the melodic discoveries and expressive nuances belong very much to this band, and the occasional acoustic guitar textures give the album a lot of breadth and dimension. Unabashedly, though, and far more so than Eunson’s 2015 EP Autumn, Ace is a fusion endeavor: wailing distortion, hard-driving groove, jazz-rock harmonic sensibility, particularly on the single “Ace of Hearts” and the collectively composed, almost Van Halen-esque finale “Flight of the Aces.” There’s a John Scofield-like accent to Claffy’s “Growing Pains,” harking back in a way to Sco’s Blue Matter period. Abadey contributes (and solos powerfully on) the evocative “Miracle Mile,” while tenor saxophonist Chad Lefkowitz-Brown takes a fiery guest turn on EWI (electronic wind instrument) on Eunson’s “Wrangler.” There’s also a major nod to Jeff Beck with the slow minor-key Stevie Wonder anthem “Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers,” a highlight of Beck’s Blow by Blow. But Eunson and the trio are not recycling stock licks and gestures of the genre; they’ve got their own aesthetic mission, and they’ve managed to make it pop with exceptional clarity.