The New York Times January 31, 1988, Sunday, Late City Final Edition OUT ON A LIMB, SHOUTING By JON PARELES Sinead O'Connor sings sweetly on her debut album, ''The Lion and the Cobra'' (Chrysalis 41612; LP, cassette and CD). But not very often. She's more likely to howl or snarl, to make her voice rasp or crack, to summon the gnarled embellishments of Celtic songs or the open-throated wail of arena-rock. Ms. O'Connor knows the power of the female voice, and she uses it to rail against every betrayal or barrier she can envision. ''I don't know no shame/ I feel no pain,'' she declares in ''Mandinka'' - and she wants to make her listeners believe it. ''The Lion and the Cobra'' moves between raw, personal songs and more open-ended pronouncements. Some are more impressive for their sound and conviction than their lyrics, but they add up to a strong, stubborn individuality - a willingness to go out on a limb and shout when she gets there. As songwriter, arranger and producer, Ms. O'Connor is finding her own ways to mix primal noise and elaborate backdrops. Yet when she made the album in 1987, she was only 20 years old. Ms. O'Connor can't help being compared to U2. She's Irish, like them, and her first professional recording was a vocal for ''The Captive,'' a soundtrack by U2's guitarist, The Edge. She also shares U2's aura of high purpose (rarely leavened by humor) and hints of religiosity, and like U2 she writes lyrics stripped of detail; they're all image and declaration. She's also learned a few guitar chords and vocal inflections from U2, but there's far more to her music. Ms. O'Connor grew up in the 1970's, and despite the punky, post-apocalyptic look of her shaved head, she hasn't rejected all the 1970's rock that punk overturned. There are echoes of Joni Mitchell's confessionals, Stevie Nicks's hoarse pleas and adolescent metaphors, Steeleye Span's traditional rock, and the pomp of Emerson, Lake and Palmer. ''Just Like U Said It Would B'' recalls the multistage songs of Led Zeppelin, segueing British folksong and quasi-Baroque orchestration. Beyond that, Ms. O'Connor learned from 1970's rock that a song could be something other than quick and noisy; it could stretch out, meditate, obsess. She also dips into post-punk rock: the Pretenders, Marianne Faithfull, The The, Patti Smith, Kate Bush, Peter Gabriel, Laurie Anderson. And from Grace Slick and the Jefferson Airplane in the 1960's, she's learned how to turn a sustained note into a cold, lacerating cry. Yet her mutable voice and her elastic songs, which might stretch for an added thought or pause to let a line sink in, reveal her own sense of timing. Unlike most rock songwriters, Ms. O'Connor can work in slow tempos as well as fast ones, something she may have learned from Irish traditional songs. ''Jackie,'' which opens the album, shows Ms. O'Connor's best and worst tendencies. Its lyrics are a would-be myth, in which the singer awaits the return of a lover said to be lost at sea; she believes he'll ''lead me away to unseen shores.'' Alone, those lyrics are hackneyed stuff, whether or not they're supposed to be an allegory about salvation. But the performance redeems ''Jackie''; with steady-strummed electric guitar chords, a vocal that rises from quiet defiance to a sustained cry, and overlays of guitar feedback and ghostly voices, the song rides an ocean of noise. Throughout ''The Lion and the Cobra,'' Ms. O'Connor defies rock's usual roles for women - as flirt, sensitive soul, tough gal, one of the boys - by claiming and transforming all of them. She's not shy about lust or anger. In ''Troy,'' she hurls blunt questions at an unfaithful lover, her voice breaking: ''Is she good for you?/ Does she hold you like I do?/ Do you want me?/ Should I leave?'' ''Jerusalem,'' which moves from folkish strumming to funk to anthemic rock, spits accusations in a staccato rap - ''Getting tired of you doing this to me/ I want to hit you if you say that to me one more time'' - then rises to exalted one-word choruses, repeating the title. ''I Want Your (Hands on Me)'' is Ms. O'Connor's variant on a ''hot radio'' come-on song, with the requisite dance beat, synthesizers and lyrics (''Why you wanna tease me/ I want you to please me''). Yet with dissonant guitars and a cutting tone in her voice, she sends a more ambiguous message; insisting ''Put 'em on me,'' she could almost be talking about handcuffs. When Ms. O'Connor makes direct statements about the world, as in ''Drink Before the War'' or ''Just Like U Said It Would B'' (''I see too many mouths open/ too many eyes closed ears closed/ not enough minds open/ too many legs open'') she falls into cliches. But when she stops making sense and lets her voice and arrangements exalt cryptic lyrics, she can be incandescent. The most promising songs on ''The Lion and the Cobra'' adopt an inscrutable, otherworldly perspective. ''Never Get Old'' seems to be about earthly distractions from transcendence; it uses spoken Gaelic, a Laurie Anderson-like tape loop, a sustained, Celtic-tinged melody and, eventually, a wordless rock march. ''Just Call Me Joe,'' written by the guitarist Kevin Mooney (credited as ''Black. Moon. E''), all but buries its lyrics beneath Mr. Mooney's stately, fuzz-toned guitar chords; it may be about a dreamed romance or a supernatural encounter (''You've seen my face but you've never heard my name''), while its coda carries a barely decipherable recitation about war and weaponry. The penultimate phrase of that recitation, and of the album, is ''Listen to what I'm not saying'' - and that may be the best way to appreciate Ms. O'Connor. In its best songs, and in its sheer sonic impact, ''The Lion and the Cobra'' has an incantatory power. Even its misfires suggest that with all her ambition and defiance, Ms. O'Connor could become a rock-and-roll Cassandra.