As I opened the package shortly after its arrival, a question popped immediately into my head: any relationship to those Cyruses? I expect that the same registered in yours as soon as you saw the last name above. Well, the answer is yes, Bobby is cousin to Billy Ray, father of the ubiquitous Miley. Though I have nothing against them, neither of the latter is to my musical taste, and when I hear them, it's by accident or secondhand in a Saturday Night Live parody.

I learn, though, that the family hails from eastern Kentucky. Bobby and his wife Teddi are taking the relatively more rooted approach, not only as a bluegrass act but as -- at least on their initial project -- a gospel one. Evangelical theology, which has been with bluegrass since the genre's conception in the latter 1940s, is an integral part of the culture of the Southeast, both the mountain and the lowland parts. When you hear natives perform songs of God and Jesus, you are safe in assuming they mean it. (Northern bluegrass acts maybe not so much.) A few years ago, when a prominent Kentucky-born bluegrass figure declared that his gospel albums are intended less to entertain than to convert, I was astounded, though perhaps I shouldn't have been.

Some cynical souls have likened gospel songs to advertising jingles. As one who resists cynicism as a general principle, I reject the premise while understanding the sentiment. The songs are selling a product, but you don't have to buy it to be moved by it. Religious music plays so large a role in the American canon that it's hard to imagine the latter without the former. Different styles, though, set the music in separate spaces. There's church music, and then there are sacred songs that rub shoulders with worldly ones in the marketplace, to negotiate their way as one more form of commercial pop music.

Bobby & Teddi Cyrus is not necessarily the sort of sound you'd hear in an evangelical house of worship; yet the foundational beliefs are the same. To my ears the most distinguishing feature is, however, Bobby's terrific baritone, which prompts the late George Jones' to leap to welcoming memory. The opening cut, the Jimmy Sites/Jimmy Yeary "My Wedding Day" (a better song than the title would lead you to believe, by the way), is something of a wonder. The second number (by Ronnie Bowman and Bobby), "He Rescued Me," is carried by a melody more than a little reminiscent of the one attached to the 19th-century folksong "Reuben's Train," by which I intend to register no complaint whatever.

Teddi is a fine singer, but her voice pushes the album in a more bluegrass-pop direction. One can easily imagine Bobby's voice welling up from the grittiness of a honkytonk dive; not so Teddi's, which exudes what used to be called -- maybe still is, for all I know -- wholesomeness. In the interest of full disclosure, I acknowledge that as an adult I've spent more time in unwholesome quarters where the liquor flows and unsavory behavior may follow than virtuously in pews. Even so, I happily acknowledge that wholesomeness and faith have their place, too, if one chooses to embrace them.

This is a good, agreeably listenable album of contemporary bluegrass of the sacred kind. If I were in the confession business, on the other hand, I would admit that I hope their next album will address secular stuff.