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Sweet surrender's always been the subtext of gospel music, but the velvet punch of this superstar jam band will knock out secular audiences as well. The Word features John Medeski of Medeski, Martin and Wood and youngblood trio the North Mississippi Allstars, but its star is Robert Randolph, a 23-year-old from New Jersey who is the new god of pedal-steel guitar. Randolph earned his chops in the Pentecostal church, performing the so-called "Sacred Steel" music well documented by the Arhoolie label (see Sacred Steel, Vol. 2 for a sample). He plays like an amalgamation of Duane Allman, Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, John Coltrane, Buddy Emmons, Bo Diddley, and Mahalia Jackson. In short, he's brilliant, so full of rock & roll energy, improvisational fire, and sonic acrobatics that the other great musicians on this disc mostly stay out of his way. Randolph has a seemingly divine gift for on-the-fly harmony as he splits the difference between Sunday tent meetings and Saturday juke crawls on "Keep Your Lamp Trimmed & Burning." In the Allman Brothers-style jams, Randolph plays both Dickey Betts and Duane to Medeski's organ, handling sweet, clean scales and rich, mellow slide slurs. But his vocabulary extends well beyond American-roots music. "Blood on That Rock" ends in a free-improv meltdown, and elsewhere his snaky lines sound like Middle Eastern holy singing. All of which makes The Word worth heeding. --Ted Drozdowski