GRAHAM PARKER “Live! Alone in America.” RCA....

GRAHAM PARKER “Live! Alone in America.” RCA. *** 1/2

Funny how sometimes intimacy can benefit ugly things. That’s the case with this up-close-and-personal, guitar-and-voice-only live recording by the longtime critics’ fave. Stripped of the fragile fury that his old band the Rumour lent to some of Parker’s best works, the songs and their writer are--there’s no getting around it--not very pretty: Every crag in Parker’s craggy voice is clear as a bell, and the bile and bitterness that characterize the bulk of his canon are inescapable.

But as any Parker fan will tell you, underlying all that is a solid foundation of true tenderness and caring . . . OK, call it heart, or even soul. And that too comes through stronger here than on any previous Parker album. “Watch the Moon Come Down” is unabashedly beautiful and sentimental; the personally pointed “You Can’t Be Too Strong” is now clearly anti-dehumanization rather than anti-abortion, as it is usually characterized.

The solo setting stifles none of the power of such songs as “Protection” and “Don’t Let It Break You Down,” or the romping rock fun of “Hotel Chambermaid” and the grudge-filled “Back to Schooldays.”

Where this record suffers is in the casualness of the presentation--it’s almost like listening to a friend’s high-quality bootleg tape of last night’s gig. Three new songs and a version of Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come” help, but this is not a landmark statement from an artist whose career has been notable for them. Still, the preservation of an intimate moment with an artist like this is in itself something of a landmark. (Hint to Elvis Costello and John Hiatt.)