Ophelia ****

Last time around, in her first official solo album, Natalie Merchant tolerated no nonsense. In recording Tigerlily, she wanted to make it sound as if she'd used no producer at all; the arrangements were clean and simple, overdubs were kept to a minimum, and the focus was strictly on her songs. She even recorded the album with her own money, not the record company's, personally ringing up musicians on the phone and hiring them out of her own pocket so that no man in a suit could suggest she do a thing different.

So anything would sound lush compared to Tigerlily but Natalie made sure there'd be no confusing that album with the new, lushly produced epic Ophelia. Even detractors who are tired of Merchant's too-prissy earlier work with 10,000 Maniacs might be shocked: Ophelia is an excellent slice of densely crafted lyrics with full-blown arrangements that actually work, as ambitious as Radiohead's OK Computer, if not as experimental.

Ophelia is as elegant and smooth as its title suggests. The result takes Merchant even deeper into Adult Contemporary territory & further away from pals R.E.M. and within a beer bottle's throw of that scary Streisand/Celine neighborhood. Yet the emotion is real, the passion isn't manufactured. And except for the obligatory hidden track & an instrumental Enya-esque violin/flute piece, it avoids self-indulgence and, more important, self-parody (though we can't vouch for the soon-to-be-released accompanying short film).

The songs are unfailingly catchy, often heavily orchestrated, but never smothered. For all the hype about the extra musicians, though, songs such as "Life Is Sweet" and "My Skin" are tastefully simple, despite soaring strings and vocals. It is so easy to do this badly; Merchant combines exuberance and restraint and pulls it off, whether it's the dissonant keyboard solo on "Thick as Thieves" or the ominous guitar underpinning the languid "Frozen Charlotte." It ain't exactly raw and rockin', but tastefulness is not a crime. Even in the '90s. Mark Brown