It's too easy to carp that Brett Anderson is no longer the gothic romantic that he was when he led Suede, a band legendary for its decadent theatricality, thrift-shop glam, and dark sexuality. Age changes a person, and it's mellowed Anderson — and, frankly, after years of toxic indulgence and sorrows, he deserves to settle down at least a little bit. And even if his long-promised solo debut — arriving a couple years after the long-anticipated reunion with Bernard Butler, the Tears — is clean and precise in ways that Suede never was, this is undoubtedly connected in its heart and groin to the Anderson who spent the '90s celebrating trash floating on the breeze and all kinds of nuclear debris. After all, no matter how subdued this ballad-heavy album is, Anderson still relies on his endearingly tattered book of breathless rhymes, and there's a familiar cinematic quality to much of this music, along with some diversions into boot-stomping glam. Th...