More grade-A new psych from San Francisco today, with this third album from a quintet bearing the cosmically unwieldy name of Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound. Obviously, I’m a bit of a sucker for this stuff, not least when, as in this case, it falls so squarely into the slipstream of the Comets On Fire/Howlin Rain axis. While Crystal Antlers have recently capitalised on the multi-limbed freakout heritage of the Comets, Assemble Head here seem to be shooting more for the intricate, classic rock inclinations that came to the fore on “Avatar”. That album’s producer, Tim Green, also does the honours on “When Sweet Sleep Returned”, making the most of the languid complexities found in these eight misty, keening, often prog-tinged songs. I must admit to having vague, if nebulously fond, memories of Assemble Head’s last album, but this one feels like a keeper; a mellow companion piece, too, to another recent record out of this scene, Sleepy Sun’s “Embrace”. To keep the healthy incestuousness rolling, a couple of Sleepy Sun actually figure here on “Clive And The Lyre”, a reverberant echo of Comets’ slashing psych-punk style. Generally, though, Assemble Head shoot for something more plangent and wandering, all loping grooves and labyrinthine soloing – check out “Drunken Leaves” - over twinkling Mellotrons (or at least Mellotron effects), and with a lead singer whose soft voice is hazily mixed down, a far cry from the abrasive belting of Ethan Miller. One other contemporary analogue, straying beyond the environs of Northern California for a moment, is Brooklyn’s underrated Oakley Hall: on “Kolob Canyon”, Assemble Head lock into a very similar kind of country-rock motorik. And one old reference point: maybe it’s because I’ve been playing “Shine On Brightly” a fair bit this past month or so, but there are distinct echoes of Procol Harum in the album’s more baroque, organ-heavy passages (especially in “Two Birds” and “The Slumbering Ones”, maybe), a sense of that brief period where psychedelia – particularly British psych, I guess – started tentatively morphing into prog. A new North Californian Procol to Howlin Rain’s Vanilla Fudge, maybe? Perhaps not. “When Sweet Sleep Returned” is on the Tee Pee label, and writing about it this afternoon reminded me that I should mention their labelmates Quest For Fire. From Toronto, two of them used to play in The Deadly Snakes, and I think there’s also some overlap with the current lineup of Stephen McBean’s Pink Mountaintops. Anyhow, their eponymous debut as Quest For Fire is closer to Tee Pee’s usual stoner rock fare, which is fair enough, but there’s a distinct cosmic ambition and artfulness here that aligns them reasonably enough with McBean’s other, bigger band, Black Mountain. Cool record, too.

It’d be nice to claim that I had an infallible eye for spotting a future superstar, but watching the ascent of the Gossip over the past two or three years, I’m reminded that there was a band I could’ve never have imagined becoming big. When I first saw them play in, what, 2002 maybe, I thought they were terrific. But they also seemed to be so tightly embedded in a post-riot grrl scene of fanzine elitists that, for all the strengths of Beth Ditto’s personality and pipes, they’d surely be more or less unintelligible to the mainstream. More pointedly, Ditto appeared so militantly averse to reaching any kind of rapprochement with the mainstream. During that gig, she spent about ten minutes dissecting an NME live review of Missy Elliott, claiming the writer was critical of the show because of sexism and sizeism. In fact, he was critical of Elliott’s show because it was a shambles: I was there, and grievously disappointed as Elliott spent most of the gig arbitrating talent contests and causing fights by throwing her socks and sneakers into the crowd. I wasn’t about to point this out to Ditto, however, as she proceeded to shred the copy of NME while the crowd worked themselves up into a frenzy. Along with a couple more NME writers, I shifted uncomfortably around the back of The Spitz and wished she’d get back to the music. I think of that night more or less every time I open one of London’s free papers and see Ditto beaming from the front row of some catwalk show, or wandering in and out of paparazzi shooting galleries in the company of sundry A-listers whose knowledge of the riot grrl may well be, without being too presumptuous, a bit sketchy. I think of it, too, whenever I play the new Gossip album, “Music For Men”, not least because it doesn’t sound entirely different from how they did that night: “8th Wonder” and "Spare Me From The Mold", especially, are pretty close to the vivid, chattering soul-punk they were peddling so enthusiastically on the underground circuit at the turn of the decade (though "Spare Me" is close to "Rock Lobster", too). “Music For Men”, then, as you’ve probably picked up, has not been produced, as was once rumoured, by Timbaland (for the best, I think, given his recent track record: Chris Cornell!). Instead, Rick Rubin takes charge. Rubin’s usual trick of making everything exceedingly loud works well here, unusually, not least because he has the good sense of not completely revamping the Gossip’s rudimentary formula. From the moment “Dimestore Diamond” prowls in, the bony minimalism of the band is recognised by Rubin as crucial to their appeal, giving Ditto’s heroic vocals all the space they need. It occasionally sounds as if Rubin has polished some of the rough edges off those tones, but not so much that it becomes a discomfiting listen. More amazingly, perhaps, is that the Gossip have achieved something that even a good few of their fans must have doubted; that is, written an album of songs that should ensure they won’t solely be remembered for “Standing In The Way Of Control”. It’s frontloaded, for sure, with a brilliant opening sally of “Dimestore Diamond”, “Heavy Cross” (“Control” part two, crudely, as is “Men In Love”), “8th Wonder” and “Long Long Distance”. “Love Long Distance” is probably the first track that’ll alarm the indie puritans, replacing Brace Paine’s guitar with some Italian House piano and synth washes, not unlike some of the remixes that circulated in the aftermath of the last album. Again, though, as “Love Long Distance” flows into the jittery electrofunk of “Pop Goes The World”, Rubin keeps everything fairly spare, airy and restrained, understanding that even at their most flamboyant and disco-friendly, The Gossip don’t suit a maximalist approach. It’s a canny pop makeover – an “elevation”, as April calls it in her review of “Music For Men” in the forthcoming Uncut – which stands comparison with Peaches’ fantastic “Talk To Me”. There’s a surprising lack of contemporary R&B influence, save maybe the verse of “Vertical Rhythm” which has that “Knightrider” synth sound that was all over hip hop records (a Busta Rhymes hit, was it?) a few years ago, and the shuddering electro ballad, “Four Letter Word” (a hint of Aaliyah here, in a very different way to how she was referenced on The Dirty Projectors’ “Bitte Orca”) . But the great trick “Music For Men” pulls off is that it manages to sound very shiny, modern and commercial without totally scurfing off the DIY vigour of old. Not bad.

I’m conscious that, with the Lemonheads and Sonic Youth posts last week, the blog’s slightly in danger of degenerating into something of a dewy-eyed home for alt-rock fans who were students in the late ‘80s. But unfortunately, I’m going to have to keep this going for a while longer, since the new Dinosaur Jr album represents another band of that generation sustaining their current run of form. Mascis, Barlow and Murph’s comeback album, "Beyond”, was the subject of the very first – and with hindsight somewhat sketchy – post on Wild Mercury Sound, and much of the same things hold true for “Farm”. If anything, though, this one’s even better than “Beyond”, very much bucking the trend of bands putting out a serviceable reunion album, using it to keep the comeback tour rolling for another 12 months, then quietly dissolving again. Thinking about it this morning, there’s very little reason why Dinosaur Jr should be able to return with such a hot streak – with two albums that are probably better than virtually everything J Mascis has recorded since Lou Barlow first jumped ship. The chemistry of lineups is a peculiarly unsteady science at the best of times, but that which empowers the original Dinosaur trio is especially baffling. How can we talk of chemistry at all, really, in a band that was always so legendarily dysfunctional, or at least run as some kind of passive-aggressive autocracy by Mascis? Perhaps Barlow and Murph, for all their caution, understand Mascis and the way his songs work better than any other musicians, and perhaps Mascis himself, in spite of the mythical blankness of his demeanour, is motivated by their presence? Whatever: they’ve made a generally pretty thrilling album. “Farm” is a bit more varied, relatively speaking, with fractionally less of the hardcore thrust of “Beyond” – a thrust you could probably ascribe to them recording that comeback on the back of live shows that pivoted around “You’re Living All Over Me”. There are some gentler, more or less, songs here like “See You” and “Plans”, the odd moment where a certain keening Southern rock groove emerges (on “Friends”, especially) from the usual protean chug, and the occasional air between the effects (on the outstanding solo in “I Don’t Wanna Go There”, specifically) where Mascis reveals the delicacy and technical precision of his playing that’s often so gloriously fudged and obscured. Mostly, though, it’s a typical J Mascis/Dinosaur album, but a much better than average one. The song titles remain heroically unmemorable: surely, he must have including a great lurching song called “I Don’t Wanna Go There” on every album he’s made in the past two decades? It begins, again, with a song that appears to have already been going on for about a minute – this one’s called “Pieces”, has a marvellous hook, and follows what we might call the “Wagon” model. Then there are Lou’s songs – two this time – which again present the tantalising vision of his great mature songwriting allied to Dinosaur’s incomparable muscle. The first one, “Your Weather”, is a classic even by his standards, fit to stand comparison with his finest surging folk-rockers like “Beauty Of The Ride”. Heartening stuff. As, by the looks of it, were the performances on the Uncut stage at Brighton’s Great Escape festival. A quick reminder that Tom’s been blogging about White Denim, Abe Vigoda et al here for us.