While Bob Dylan is a spent force, save for the occasional piercing insight into his own mortality, Neil Young's genius continues to glow. These two albums illustrate how - and why.

From the first smouldering bars of Falling From Above, Greendale's scorching opener, it is clear that Canada's greatest son is in vintage form. Not since Powderfinger has a Neil Young record got off to such an urgent and enticing start, and the momentum is maintained throughout.

Greendale tells the story of death and destruction in small-town California and is underpinned by Young's fears about man's relationship with this planet. But this is no ecological treatise; it is a savage indictment of our greed and self-indulgence.

Crucially, there are at least two songs on Greendale (Falling From Above and Be The Rain) which can be mentioned in the same breath as Like A Hurricane, Helpless, Four Strong Winds and Southern Man; and the rest are pretty damn good.

Masked And Anonymous is less successful. Billed as a Bob Dylan extravaganza, with four new Dylan recordings, it is in fact a strange collection of uneven cover versions taken from the eponymous, and universally panned, film.

It is left to the late, and very great, Jerry Garcia to weave his soaring guitar patterns around It's All Over Now Baby Blue and Senor (Tales Of Yankee Power) and save this record from oblivion.

A Japanese version of My Back Pages is a travesty of one of Dylan's greatest songs, while One More Cup Of Coffee, immortalised by Emmylou Harris on Desire, is a contender for the worst cover version ever. It is sung, apparently, by the Turkish winner of the Eurovision Song Contest. Enough said.

It was Neil Young who sang, in desperation, "I'm deep inside myself, I'll get out somehow" on Ambulance Blues in the 1970s. Ironically, he has emerged from his inner turmoil, but Bob Dylan - on recent evidence - has sunk so deeply into himself that he can't see out. Greendale and Masked And Anonymous are the respective results.

Updated: 09:16 Thursday, September 11, 2003