Roy Orbison - A Love So Beautiful (2017) [Japan Edition]

Roy Orbison's old Sun labelmate Elvis Presley wound up scoring an international hit in 2015 with If I Can Dream, an album where the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra played over old Elvis recordings. With an audience established, other artist estates stepped into the breech, including Orbison's, who endorsed pairing old Roy recordings with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Given that Orbison's hits often verged on the symphonic, this pairing might seem to make more sense than Presley, but A Love So Beautiful contains a considerable amount of rockers -- "Oh, Pretty Woman," "Dream Baby," "Uptown," "Mean Woman Blues" -- that do not lend themselves well to ornate arrangements; they sound pretty silly with the strings sawing. Odder still, Orbison's lush classics -- "In Dreams," "Crying," "It's Over," "Running Scared" -- do not benefit from the orchestral reinterpretations; they sound sticky and heavy. What was once elegant has curdled into something syrupy, and while the technological achievement is admirable -- the seams can't be heard between the old and new recordings -- the resulting record does a disservice to the imagination of the original Orbison recordings and his gorgeous voice. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine