What you have here is one of the finest black gospel albums ever created. The Gospel Soul Children hail from New Orleans and that’s a hint for you. On this album, the choir sings a ton of old-school gospel hymns and some slightly more modern chorus based tunes. At around forty-five minutes, the album just breezes by, helped along by the fact that the majority of the tracks are delivered at a high tempo with that gospel back beat on the drums and the spry bass line propelling things along. There’s one song here I didn’t care for, a quite pretentious and syrupy version of The Lord’s Prayer, which features that bane of almost all music, the spoken word section. But just about every song here is great, whether it’s an a ccapella version of the old blues tune No Hiding Place, a soulful stripped down version of Down By the Riverside, a hopped up two minute romp through Leaning on the Everlasting Arms, called What a Fellowship here, or an epic eight minute breakdown of Is Your All on the Altar?, a brilliant opening. This album really is just phenomenal and if you’re not sold on the idea of gospel music, this is the album to sell you on it. Passionate, vibrant performances, high energy, a fantastic backing group of musicians . . . praise the Lord indeed. 4 stars.
tl;dr – anointed, spirited performances from this New Orleans gospel choir with a great backing band and high energy throughout; close to the pinnacle of black gospel music. 4 stars.