Handsome Jack

Everything’s Gonna Be Alright alive natuRalSound Third album from soulful Buffalo blues-rock trio.

Rock and soul don’t always make easy bedfellows. And so it proves at times on this third album from upstate New Yorkers Handsome Jack, as they try gamely to add Motown and Stax decorations to their East Coast-doessouthern-rock sound.

On opener Keep On, Jamison Passuite’s vocals are so gruff and bluesy that they could well have been tarred, feathered, gritted and oak-aged in whiskey barrels for several decades, and Getting Stronger has a satisfyingly Skynyrd-ish stomp. But when Baby Be Cool offers Muscle Shoals twang and groove replete with honking horn section, it’s less convincing. The same is true when Why Do I Love You The

Way I Do channels Otis

Redding. They fare far better when the prowling malevolence of the title track and Bad Blood return to the dark, dirty rock’n’roll basics Handsome

Jack do so well.