San Francisco's Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound is a soundtrack for strange days and futures bright and bleak. But there is also a crooked thread that runs backward through every Assemble Head record the celestial trajectories of The Notorious Byrd Brothers and circa 70 Floyd; the dusty canyon stomps of Crazy Horse, slashing action pop of the savage young Who, Italian bastardizations of Lalo Schifrin cop movie scores, and the scuzz-bomb shrapnel of latter-day garage mongers like Mudhoney and Monoshock.

The band's third LP, When Sweet Sleep Returned, is propelled to some extent by that same glorious distillate. But it also finds the group speaking their own twisted tongue more assuredly than ever marrying hazy Saturday moods, interstellar sonics and wrecking-ball swing to song and harmony in poems for California, lovers, ghosts, the stars, and a world gone stark raving mad.