Consumer Guide Album

Roy Orbison: Mystery Girl [Virgin, 1988]
If you're guessing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity squandered by the assembled bigshots, guess again. They've done their man's tradition proud. Problem's the tradition--just listen to the latest Rhino retrospective, which celebrates its inevitable schlockification at MGM, and you'll know why Orbison's comeback was made for this corporate era. When he gets a great tune produced just right--Wilbury-penned lead hit, Bono-Edge title ballad, Waylon's "In Dreams" sequel--his unassuming seriousness can make you think twice about opera. But with his mythic voice no longer distinguishing surely between tenderness and sentimentality, "A Love So Beautiful" and "Windsurfer" are bathos. And when Elvis C. leaves him stranded atop a ferris wheel and he just sits there contemplating his tragedy in song, the only thing mythic is the scale of the self-parody. B