as anyone since James Dean, they deified adolescent alienation.

Going solo, however, Morrissey dropped ace guitarist Johnny Marr and any straight rock & roll appeal. The bride stripped bare, he became a freaky diva exuding exactly that unabashed artfulness that unsettles Yanks. It's a Brit thing; we wouldn't understand. Digging blank stars (Madonna) or "sincere" antiheroes (anything Seattle), we feel that Morrissey's zeal to be both matinee idol and trembling poet is asking too much. And the fact that the best new U.K. bands are adamantly Morrissey's heirs means that we largely ignore them.

Fourteen recent singles, B sides and live tracks, World of Morrissey unveils the lad in all his prickly glory. Concentrating on last year's stellar Vauxhall and I and 1992's even better Your Arsenal (on which producer Mick Ronson passed the glamrock baton to a fitting successor), World skirts some of the singer's best darker work ("November Spawned a Monster," "Suedehead"), but it's hardly breezy. Everything throbs with Morrissey's keynote, a passionate ambiguity that is riveting and disturbing.

Such a stance doesn't stoke the masses, but the heat with which Morrissey indulges it explains his cult's fire. He has fewer followers than the Smiths would have had, but they're die-hards, jealously protective. An expert tease enamored of masks and artifice, Morrissey whets their fascination by constructing songs that are all about vulnerability – his thematic range (failure, loss, betrayal, secrecy) is determinedly narrow – but he hides as much as he reveals. Morrissey confesses, but in code.

His pompadour copped from English rocker Billy Fury, his gold-lamé shirt draped in gladioluses in homage to Oscar Wilde, Morrissey onstage crosses torchsong stylishness and rockabilly sass. His songs, too, are double pronged: surging guitar and languorous vocals. A concert delight like "You're the One for Me, Fatty" flaunts Morrissey's '50s fixation – he stutters like Buddy Holly – and a cover of Henry Mancini's "Moon River" underscores his passion for silver-screen fantasy. The Moorish guitar and swirling sax of the new "Whatever Happens, I Love You" prove his flair for catchy melodies; the current single "Boxers" shows that Morrissey is nearly peerless in constructing an aesthetic of embarrassment. "Losing in front of your home crowd/You wish the