Grown-up Dolls find no love (L-U-V) in safety.

In 1973, the New York Dolls’ self-titled debut opened with an abrupt cymbal crash and that sexy, nervous, gritty riff that wrapped around “Personality Crisis.” Thirty-five years ago, they were going to take their city by storm — they just didn’t know it.

Three decades and three tragedies later, the Dolls return with Sylvain Sylvain and David Johansen leading a band that remembers what it was like to be a half-formed human, but only in fuzzy details. The title track and “Exorcism of Despair” bookend the album with aplomb and bite, but a revisit to 1973’s “Trash” is most telling. Inexplicably tinged with calypso, the song loses all of its paranoia, adolescent rush of hormones and its urgency. The Dolls aren’t fighting for their lives anymore, and that makes all the difference.