Neil Young [ tickets ] has peddled road-as-metaphor-for-life tunes for as long as he's been recording albums, so it's not surprising he would devote his latest studio set to, essentially, one long, shaggy dog tale about an environmentally friendly Lincoln Continental.

Nor, given Young's relatively recent brush with mortality (his brain aneurysm in 2005 and subsequent complications, which everyone seemed to promptly forget about once Neil slipped right back into his typically busy work mode), should anyone be terribly surprised that the rock legend would produce something so footloose and carefree at age 63, because let's face it: he's right where he wants to be and owes nothing to nobody at this point.

No, the mildly unexpected news about "Fork in the Road" is how perfectly it fits into Young's entire back catalog; sonically, it slots neatly and unapologetically into his mid-'70s oeuvre, comfortably existing in the Neiliverse somewhere between "Zuma" and "Rust Never Sleeps." It's a Big Guitar album, and veers sharply away from Young's most recent retreats to "Harvest" territory.

The guitars are huge and sweeping on the crunching trio that opens the album, "When World's Collide," "Fuel Line" and the pointed "Just Singing a Song," which gently rebukes entertainers who opt for benefit recordings and live appearances over a commitment to genuine change. "You can sing about change while making your own," Young offers. "Just singing a song won't change the world."

Thematically, Young remains a storyteller almost without peer. The leitmotif weaving through most of the songs on "Fork on the Road" is Neil's recent experience when he and a friend converted a 1959 Lincoln Continental to run on biofuels and then drove the car--dubbed the Lincovolt--across the US on sort of a combination road trip/goodwill tour.

"Johnny Magic," paying tribute to Young's Lincvolt partner, Johnathan Goodwin, serves as sort of an alternate-universe bookend to 1979's "My My, Hey Hey (Into the Black)," with its "Johnny Rotten" call-and-response and mulling over how to stay true to yourself and whether its better to burn out or fade way. Thirty years later, Old Neil has an answer for Young Neil: stop navel-gazing and help save the planet!

There is a rough and unfinished feel to many of the songs here that recalls the off-the-cuff spontaneity of Young's Topanga Canyon work from the '70s, "On the Beach" or "Comes a Time." Voices and characters shuffle in and out from one tune to the next; "You gotta get behind the wheel in the morning and drive!," Neil exhorts his shifting choir in one song, and advises that you can never take your eyes off the road in the pretty, lulling "Off the Road," although he's only peripherally talking about an actual road by this point.

The album's centerpiece is the state-of-the union title track, which chugs along like a well-tuned racing machine and caps the set with a blast of pure, icy indignation: "There's a bailout coming but it's not for you," Young stews. "It's for all those creeps hiding what they do." There's a fork in the road ahead, Neil points out, but "I don't know which way I'm gonna turn."

But what do we do about everything while he's still making up his mind? "Keep on bloggin' til the power goes out," Young advises. Take the wheel with both hands and drive.