With the news this morning that Neil Young has been confirmed to headline both Glastonbury and Hyde Park Hard Rock Calling in June, I’ve finally got my head around his new album, “Fork In The Road”, as promised. It sometimes strikes me that while many of his fans might perceive Neil’s greatest moment as, I don’t know, “Like A Hurricane” or “Cortez The Killer” or something, the singer himself maybe privileges “Piece Of Crap” above all his other songs these days. He may also have a higher regard for “Re-Ac-Tor” in its entirety than is strictly canonical. This is the tradition into which “Fork In The Road” generally fits, just as “Living With War” and, to a degree, “Greendale” did: home-cooked, unvarnished, phenomenally unsteady, more or less spontaneous. It strikes me that latterday Neil fans will be somewhat divided on this one. Those that favour the more finished likes of “Prairie Wind” (or God forbid, “Are You Passionate?”) will probably find it annoyingly lo-fi and cranky. Those of us, however, who prefer Neil in this rough-hewn mood, with ideas in the ascendant over schmaltz, may be happier. I’d prefer the epic, billowing side that came to the fore on a good half of “Chrome Dreams II”, but he doesn’t seem to go down that path on record so often these days. In the absence of a new “No Hidden Path” – and, indeed, the absence of those damned “Archives” – “Fork In The Road” will do fine. It is, as suspected, a crude and bashed-out garage rock album that loosely connects motoring with the American economy. But beneath the rough edges, a good few of these ten swift songs are keepers. The title track you’ll already know (I blogged about it here), not least from that superb Youtube video. “Get Behind The Wheel” is much in the same vein, another choogle that’s a good deal faster than Young’s contemplative slouch. Much of the album, in fact, rattles along at a quicker rate than his default speed. It’s far from a smooth ride, though: “Cough Up The Bucks” features a crotchety anchoring riff that seems to mirror the spluttering if still powerful engine of one of Young’s hulking old cars. Only the lovely “Just Singing A Song” features Young’s keynote lyrical playing, that stunned expansiveness, and wouldn’t have sounded out of place on “Ragged Glory”. There are many odd things here, of course, including the first single, “Johnny Magic”, with clipped, cutesy backing vox that – aligned with the song title – remind me terrifyingly of Jonathan King’s “Johnny Reggae” (big caveat: I haven’t heard that record in years and years, so could be completely wrong there). Two tracks slow down the chug: “Off The Road” is a ballad so exhausted and damaged, it almost seems to collapse, rather pleasingly; “Light A Candle” is more delicate and finessed and, with Ben Keith in evidence, might temporarily placate “Prairie Wind” fans. But then “Fork In The Road” trundles off again, and provides us all with an, albeit snarky, mission statement: “Keep on blogging ‘til the power goes out. . .”

One today that I think might interest a few of you. “Embrace” is the debut album by a Santa Cruz sextet called Sleepy Sun, who you could place as very much part of a new wave of Californian heavy psych. Since we were talking about the area’s titan trees on Friday, this quote from the band stood out: “It comes more from Northern California itself more than any scene or city. There is truly nowhere on Earth like our little corner of the country where the redwoods smother the ocean.” I don’t have a huge amount of time this morning because we’re on deadline, so apologies if this one comes across as little more than a string of comparisons. The thing is, Sleepy Sun come from the same blessed spot as, yep, Comets On Fire, and could probably be bracketed alongside fellow newcomers like Crystal Antlers. But as the clean, needly “New Age” rears up, Sleepy Sun reveal themselves as probably closer kin to Black Mountain, perhaps, with Amber Webber at the helm, or comrades in the jurassic lurch of Blue Cheer-descendants like Dead Meadow. There’s a transfigured, damaged blues vibe to plenty of this, too, which calls to mind variously Jefferson Airplane, a less supine Brightblack Morning Light or even, weirdly, Kim Gordon (possibly Free Kitten more than Sonic Youth, mind). Sleepy Sun aren’t averse to slouching about and taking their time this way, though, so a pleasurably desolate song like “Lord” turns out to be countrified, piano-driven and reminiscent of Amber Webber’s Black Mountain spin-off, Lightning Dust. PJ Harvey’s contributions to Josh Homme’s last Desert Sessions jam, too. But it’s the freakouts, predictably, which hit hardest, none more so than the really long one, “White Dove”, which occasionally spins into the orbit of Bardo Pond. Rachael Williams is an intense and powerful presence at the heart of these songs, and I love the way that you can occasionally hear her whooping far down in the mix as the twin guitars hurtle and spiral off towards some kind of cosmic resolution. It’s a very cool record. Check them out at www.myspace.com/sleepysun and let me know, as ever, what you think.

After our blog feast the other week - thanks to When You Awake for getting in touch and for all your other recommendations, by the way - I figured I should mention a couple more. So thanks also to Chris P on this week’s playlist thread, who reminded me about Ethan Miller’s own awesome new blog, Silver Currant. Wild Mercury Sound regulars are probably heartily sick of me going on about Miller who, through his work fronting Howlin Rain and Comets On Fire, is something of a totemic figure round these parts. Ethan’s just started his blog, and has already posted two amazing Rapidshare links. One is a jam session when Comets guitarist Ben Chasny tried out his bandmates for a meatier take on his Six Organs Of Admittance material. The second is an extraordinary mixtape of psychedelic heavy rock from around the globe, compiled by Howlin Rain’s European promoter, John Fitzgerald. “Fitz Killer Riff” is pretty short on familiar names - I recognised Erkin Koray, Coloured Balls, Ike Turner and Tommy James, and discovered through a bit of Googling that the mildly obscene garage Led Zep of Zipper was an early vehicle for Fred Cole of Dead Moon. But I can’t think I’ve heard a better comp this year, certainly not since Chasny sent over his “Golden Years” thing. Anyway, check it out. And also, if you’re interested in trees, have a look at Mario Vaden’s blog, who got in touch after I mentioned Richard Preston’s book, “The Wild Trees”, on a blog about Alela Diane. Lots of beautiful pictures of the biggest redwoods in the world, which work for me.

I was reading my blog on Super Furry Animals’ “Hey Venus” the other day, and noticed a comment that the band were working on two other albums for imminent release, albums that’d put the tidy poppiness of “Hey Venus” into quite a different context. Like so many talked-up projects in that vein, nothing seemed to come of them. But the new Super Furry Animals album, “Dark Days/Light Years” feels very much like the yang to the yin of “Hey Venus”. It begins with six minutes of skittering beats, Hendrix-derived freak-outs and the Super Furry chorus lead by Bunf and proclaiming the song title, “Crazy Naked Girls”. If “Hey Venus” was a compact statement of SFA’s more socialised aspects, “Crazy Naked Girls” signals the band asserting its ambitious, messy, daft, generally inspired side – the side that some of us love the most, to be honest. “Dark Days/ Light Years” made very little sense on first listen, but on a second go it sounded very much like the best record the band have been associated with (and this includes Neon Neon and Gruff Rhys' “Candylion” as well as, deep sigh, The Peth and so on) since “Phantom Power”. It features a lot of songs built out of grooves, some of which reportedly date back something like nine years. There’s a song called “The Very Best Of Neil Diamond”, and one called “White Socks/Flip Flops”. Nick McCarthy from Franz Ferdinand contributes a stentorian rap in German. The same song is featured twice, in Welsh and English. Derangement, albeit beautifully orchestrated, seems more or less constant. That’s not to say there aren’t some fantastic pop songs here, though. “Inaugural Trams”, with the German rap, is a nagging, squelching electropop of sorts. “Inconvenience” is one of Gruff’s idiosyncratic rants against the world, set to a glammish boogie that heavily recalls “Golden Retriever” and, possibly, Status Quo. And “Helium Hearts” has the kind of curiously soulful lilt that ran through “Juxtaposed With U”. Stranger stuff is afoot, though, not least “The Very Best Of Neil Diamond”, which roughly resembles Neon Neon’s “Trick For Treat” rescored as Turkish psychedelia (Is that an electric saz on there? I hope so), and another great Bunf song, “White Socks/Flip Flops”, which goes back to the source of “The Man Don’t Give A Fuck”, sharing something of the gleaming shuffle of Steely Dan’s “Showbiz Kids”. Best of all, perhaps, there are some dazed, expansive, harmony-heavy tracks of pulsating psychedelia, like the evocative “Cardiff In The Sun”, which begins with a splintered guitar sound frighteningly – and surely inadvertently – reminiscent of The Edge, before pushing into a sort of blissed-out groove, with Gruff’s vocals – as they are often throughout the album – heavily treated. By the end of the album, things get even more ecstatically hazy. The rich harmonies of “Where Do You Wanna Go” have drifted into “Lliwiau Llachar”, another song built on top of the same backing track. Finally, there’s “Pric”, a stainless motorik that builds and builds, is assailed by some vintage acid effects, chiming guitars and whistling, then takes a long time to fall apart very quietly. I can’t recall an SFA album that has felt so explicitly like the work of a band; when Gruff does take the lead, his voice is often electronically altered, buried into the mix, or swamped by harmonies. Best of all, I guess, it’s going to be available digitally very soon: March 16, to be precise. Exciting!