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
. Given that
'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,
'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
recordings and his gorgeous voice. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine