** 1/2 IAN McCULLOCH “Candleland” <i> Sire</i>

The first solo album from McCulloch, former singer of Echo & the Bunnymen, is a gentle, introspective affair that gets awfully self-involved as its creator casts himself as a man of deep feeling and troubled sensibility. The overriding theme is a good one, fully appropriate to a singer who has left a successful band: Is it possible to recapture a youthful spark in a life that is sinking into routine and complacency? At times, McCulloch sounds far too cozy and comfortable in his melancholy, nestling into gauze-lined sonic reveries in which he contemplates with a studied sigh the difficulty of finding happiness and fulfillment. One wishes that he’d rage just a little against the dying of the inner light. Maybe next time this member of the brooding-Hamlet school of British pop can bring his Angst to a gripping crisis instead of just examining it like Yorick’s skull.