The Boston Globe September 9, 1994, Friday, City Edition By Steve Morse, Globe Staff Sinead O'Connor has kept a low profile ever since she tore up a picture of the pope on "Saturday Night Live" two years ago. She later toured as a backup singer for Peter Gabriel, contributed to a Van Morrison tribute album and hung out with the Irish folk group the Chieftains. But she's about to return with a new record of her own, "Universal Mother," an astonishingly beautiful album in praise of children and their innocence, and against any harm that may come their way. "Universal Mother," on EMI/Chrysalis Records, will be out next Thursday. O'Connor won't be in any record stores that day, however, because she's currently in rehabilitation to kick a longstanding marijuana habit. It's been a tough couple of years for her. In a recent Q magazine interview, she also acknowledged a suicide attempt (she was saved in time by Gabriel) and continued problems from alleged child abuse at the hands of a mother who used to stomp violently on her womb. The new album, filled with intimate, hauntingly confessional piano ballads, feels like a cry of pain against all that she has suffered. It also feels like a long, extended prayer for sanctuary. It's as intense an album as you'll hear this year. Hardly a commercial record, "Universal Mother" opens with "Fire on Babylon," a hip-hop-influenced tune that includes an ascending primal scream addressed toward O'Connor's mother: "All along she gave me lies just to make me think I loved her." Some people have interpreted it as an attack on the Catholic Church, but there's a new video (just shown on "120 Minutes") that makes it clear it's about her mother. It shows a young child clutching a doll, while freezing in absolute terror of her mother. Then, however, come some gorgeous love songs. "John I Love You," a hymn-like lullaby, has her singing in a high register: "Child, you're tender/ Your name's a whisper." It's followed by "My Darling Child," with a music box sound and the verse: "My darling child, you came and saved me." O'Connor's son, Jake, is now 7 years old. He even sings a short 20-second song, "Am I a Human," on the record. He cutely intones: "Am I a human?/ It's very good/ Maybe I am/ It's very nice/ The feelings in me/ And the fire/ Keeps me warm." Other child-centered songs come later, such as "All Babies" ("all babies are born singing God's name") and the transfixing "Scorn Not His Simplicity" (written by Phil Coulter), a piano ballad about a learning-impaired youth. "Scorn not his simplicity/ But rather try to love him all the more," O'Connor sings with hushed eloquence. Appearing on the record is drummer John Reynolds, who is O'Connor's husband. They are now separated, though still close friends. It gives a family feel to the disc that O'Connor obviously never felt in her own home growing up in Ireland. The album includes a stunning, minimalist reading of Kurt Cobain's "All Apologies," as well as a couple of highly charged, though still intimately arranged, protest songs. There's the liberationist anthem "Red Football," where she snarls, "I'm not no animal in the zoo . . . My body's not a football for you." (There's also a radio snippet on the album of Germaine Greer's speech to the BBC: "I think it's women who will have to break the spiral of power and find the trick of cooperation.") Another protest image appears in the Us3-like, jazz/hip-hop of "Famine," which blasts the neighboring English, whom she accuses of causing the Irish famine. Overall, however, this is a remarkably tender, wistful, loving album in which O'Connor is plainly trying to restabilize herself. She's not planning to tour, but she will perform on the David Letterman show in late October.