**** <i> Great Balls of Fire</i> *** <i> Good Vibrations</i> ** <i> Maybe Baby</i> * <i> Running on Empty </i> : NEIL YOUNG AND THE MEANING OF ‘LIFE’

*** “LIFE.” Neil Young & Crazy Horse. Geffen.

Think that Neil Young is kidding when he gives his latest slab of Distortion Heaven the opus-like title “Life”?

Think again.

He is not naive enough to make an overtly philosophical stab at Summing It All Up, but the way he so neatly divides the album into halves--Side 1 deals with the macro (world) and Side 2 the micro (personal)--makes clear that he is after breadth on some level or another, even if it’s a tongue-in-cheek one.

The first side is chock-full of Young’s world views, but those looking for clues to his often confusing political outlook won’t find much evidence to go on here. The first and most intriguing track, “Mideast Vacation,” is an enigmatic enough narrative of recent global events that doves will no doubt read it as dove-ish and hawks will no doubt hear it as hawk-ish. (Judging from the bloodthirsty cheers Young got with the lines “I was Rambo in the disco / I was shooting to the beat” on tour last fall, expect more of the latter readings among the rank and file.)

After that promising--if vague--opener, Side 1 starts downhill with “Long Walk Home,” a surprisingly typical what’s-happened-to-America balladic anthem; “Around the World,” a slightly less typical what’s-happened-to-the-world loud rock anthem, and “Inca Queen,” a moody snoozer that retraces “Cortez the Killer” territory and evokes nostalgia for millennia past with halcyon bird chirpings replacing the bomb sounds of the opening two cuts.

Heavy, no?

Side 2 shifts gears--and none too soon. “She’s too lonely, too lonely, too lonely to fall in love,” shrieks Young about the waitress in question, setting the tone with a minor fuzz-tone classic for an ingratiating side that’s mostly about, well, loneliness. “Cryin’ Eyes,” “When Your Lonely Heart Breaks,” “We Never Danced” . . . you get the picture. Only “Prisoners of Rock ‘n’ Roll”--the raucous theme song of Young’s recent “garage-band” tour, with its anti-record-company refrain of “That’s why we don’t want to be good”--is out of place amid all the broken-heartedness.

So: Is Young trying to suggest with the two-part structure of “Life” that the world’s problems can all be traced to folks not being able to get a date on Saturday night? Or was he simply trying to squeeze two album concepts onto a single disc? Whatever the case, the record skirts awfulness in certain moments, but once it really kicks into gear it seems all too short. Kind of like life.