Reviewed by Tony Cummings

A group who've been going 45 years should know exactly how to whip up a crowd and these long time travellers of the Gospel Highway certainly do the business here. Recorded live at Houston's Fountain Of Praise Church, Houston the veterans do their soulful, hand clapping, foot stomping, church wrecking stuff with commendable abandon. Lead singer Joe Ligon has long been one of the great voices of gospel and his hoarse, righteous rasp has lost none of its ability to thrill with the passing of the years while Richard Wallace, Ron Staples and Mike Cook keep the harmonies and those essential call-and-response vocal riffs coming over which Ligon can improvise endless exhortations to praise. The Clouds have cut previous live albums down the years but this is probably their best. What is astonishing about the project is how the Clouds have assembled a bunch of new songs which sound exactly like the kind of earthy quartet material they were recording for Peacock Records back in the '50s. Even titles like "God Can" and "Mama Prayed It Through" sound like numbers from another era. No flirtations with urban sounds here then. Simply a quartet on top of their game showing that traditional gospel still has an extraordinary ability to stir the soul.

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