*** BOB GELDOF “The Vegetarians of Love” <i> Atlantic</i> : <i> Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor) to five (a classic). : </i>

This earthy album could save Live Aid’s instigator from living embalmment in pop-star humanitarianism. There is nothing more unpretentious than the Irish folk strains that dominate the record, and Geldof undertakes his Celtic roots renewal with a commingling of the Waterboys’ reverence and the Pogues’ roughneck charm.

For Geldof, the real St. Bob is Dylan--a pervasive influence here, along with Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks” mysticism. Geldof mulls the fate of the world about a third of the time, with mixed artistic results ranging from the leaden “Thinking Voyager 2 Type Things” to the invigorating “Chains of Pain.”

But the best songs are directed inward, where Geldof finds the private soul as susceptible to starvation as the Third World masses. “No Small Wonder” is a fine evocation of how transcendence (represented in a stirring instrumental chorus) and emptiness exert a simultaneous, omnipresent tug on our lives.