Although it's subtitled "Soothing Inspirational Music for Your Baby," this threadbare set most certainly isn't full of lullabies, and it would appear Fuel simply took a collection of mostly live gospel tracks and slapped a picture of a mother and her baby on the cover without a whole lot of thought, subliminal or otherwise. What could possibly be soothing about
Aretha Franklin's solo piano version of "While the Blood Runs Warm in My Veins"? Stark and haunting but poorly recorded,
Franklin's performance is full of a hesitant, almost desperate urgency. Soothing it ain't. Neither is
the Blind Boys of Alabama's "I'm Just Another Soldier" or
Rev. Willie Morganfield's "Are You Satisfied?," or almost anything else collected here. The whole baby angle is simply a marketing device, so don't be duped into thinking this disc will send your young one off to dreamland. This is strident Southern gospel intended to rile up the soul and get people on their feet and stomping and shouting their way to the everlasting. It might be easier to just give the kid some sugar.