GLOBAL warming is rife. Snow drops and primulas have popped their heads through the winter surface already, a Red Admiral butterfly has been spotted in Hampshire, and the first album of summer has arrived.

Gruff Rhys, lead minstrel of Welsh psychedelic daisies Super Furry Animals, puts a paper-and-felt lion on his album sleeve, and the contents of his second solo experiments are just as pretty, delicate and colourful.

After 2005's entirely Welsh Yr Atal Genhedlaeth, Candylion is sung largely in English, with only two detours into Welsh and one into cod-Patagonian Spanish, but the natural home of this dreamy 21st century sonic-folk is in space.

Rhys's songs are simple, languid if occasionally brooding, yet full of mellow charm and genial quirks, climaxing with the 15 bonkers minutes of Skylon!, a fantastical tale of a hijacked plane.

Guess who defuses the bomb, just like his album.