Album: Brett Anderson, Black Rainbows (EMI)

With the best will in the world, a fourth solo album of elegant, cello-backed ballads might have been too much, even for devoted Anderson fans.

So, perhaps inspired by Suede's reunion, the singer has made a rock album. Black Rainbows isn't all-out kick-ass noise but, by turns, spindly and fuzzy, smooth and angular. "The Exiles" possesses a menace we haven't heard since "Introducing the Band" and if it's sweeping romanticism you want, nobody does it better.