‘AIMLESS LOVE’ IS PRIME PRINE

One of the rewards of being a pop critic is that you get hundreds of albums a year delivered to your desk.

One of the drawbacks is that you have to listen to most of them--and most are so dreary that major record companies ought to be ashamed at putting their logos on them.

John Prine’s “Aimless Love”--his first album in almost five years--stands so high above this sea of mediocrity that labels should be standing in line to release it.

The fact that Prine had to put the record out himself (on his new “Oh-Boy”Records) is a sad commentary on the state of the record business.

Prine has made seven albums since 1971 (four on Atlantic, three on Asylum) and most of them have ended up on numerous critical Top 10 lists. Don’t be surprised if “Aimless Love,” a warm and insightful series of psychological studies, ends up on some of those lists, too.

Until I read John O’Hara’s “Appointment in Samarra” during my first year of high school, I didn’t realize that much of the most powerful fiction is drawn from an author’s own experience.

I had previously thought of novelists as people who simply used their imagination to make up stories. O’Hara’s book changed my thinking because some scenes seemed to describe people and events that I had encountered. They rang true.

Prine’s music, too, rings true. It speaks with consistent insight and heart. His lyrics, which add interesting twists to often familiar or sentimental images, come as close to the grace and discovery of poetry as you get in a pop song.

Several of Prine’s songs have gained wide exposure via other artists. Bette Midler recorded “Hello in There,” a tender look at the way old people are frequently brushed aside. Don Williams had a No. 1 country single in 1983 with “Love Is on a Roll,” which Prine wrote with Roger Cook, and John Cougar Mellencamp included “Jackie O,” which Prine co-wrote with the rock singer, on his latest album.

But Prine’s own records have not stormed the sales charts, though word-of-mouth and concerts have attracted enough new Prine fans over the years for his 1971 debut LP to be nearing the 500,000 mark by now.

The problem commercially with Prine is that he has never found a place on the airwaves. Radio programmers are uncomfortable with his coarse vocals and his freewheeling mix of pop, country, folk and rock strains. He doesn’t fix exactly into any of those fields.

Apparently feeling there is no way around the radio hurdle, record companies prefer to deal with safer--though far less gifted--pop entities. They look at Prine’s sales figures rather than listen to his artistry.

That’s why you may have to order his new album by mail, though Prine’s manager, Al Bunetta, said some chains are stocking it.

Prine, who had moved into some radical rock textures in 1979’s “Pink Cadillac” album, returned to his early folk-oriented, largely acoustic setting in his last album, the frequently dark and despairing “Storm Windows.”

In “Aimless Love,” which was recorded over the past 2 1/2 years, Prine shifts to a slightly more country feel to reflect on psychological isolation.

There are moments of brightness and humor in the LP, but the heart of “Aimless Love” deals with people who are nearly immobilized by their loneliness: a guy alone with his bottle in “Me, Myself and I”; a woman sitting alone at a bar in “The Oldest Baby in the World,” trying to resolve her sweet dreams and her faded looks. The character in the album’s title track is nervous about even looking for love; afraid “to have his heart touched/Without a glove.”

But the album’s most gripping tale is “Unwed Fathers,” which Prine co-wrote with Bobby Braddock. It’s a marvelous blend of indictment and art, the lyrics of which would be equally at home printed on the pages of Ms. magazine or the New Yorker. The song describes a pregnant Appalachian woman’s plight, unsupported by the child’s father. A sample line: “From a teen-age lover/To an unwed mother/Kept undercover/Like some bad dream.”

Rather than dwell on the potential melodrama in the songs, Prine sings with a reporter’s detachment, wrapping the stories--which are as discomfiting as imagining someone you love feeling helpless and unwanted--in melodies that are as warm as a baby’s first laugh.

Bunetta said record companies did show interest in Prine after he wrote “Jackie O” with Mellencamp, sensing perhaps that he was moving into more of a rock direction. But Prine wanted these songs released before he moved on. “Aimless Love” can be ordered ($9) through Oh-Boy Records, Box 67800-5333, Los Angeles 90067.

FOR THE RECORD: Sheena Easton’s “Strut” was inadvertently omitted from the Female Pop Vocal category in Friday’s listing of the Grammy nominations.

LIVE ACTION: Tickets are on sale today for Prince’s six concerts at the Forum: Feb. 19-21 and 23-25. . . . Some tickets remain for a third U2 concert, March 5 at the Sports Arena. . . . Tickets go on sale Sunday for two Universal Amphitheatre shows: Emmylou Harris March 1 and Camilo Sesto March 8-9. . . . Tickets will be available Monday for Kiss’ Feb. 17 date at the Long Beach Arena, and for two Beverly Theatre concerts: James Brown Feb. 23 and Billy Ocean March 2. . . . Coming to the Palace: the Tom Robinson Band (Feb. 1) and Alton Ellis (Feb. 3).