The Times September 16, 1994, Friday David Sinclair Death, doom and despair - it can only be another Sinead O'Connor collection of loathe songs. SINEAD O'CONNOR Universal Mother (Ensign 8 30549) HAVING chronicled the misery of her dysfunctional family life in interview and song for many years, Sinead O'Connor casts the net a lot wider on Universal Mother, embracing the distress of her entire island nation ''I see the IrishAs a race like a childThat got itself bashed in the face'' and, indeed, on ''All Babies'', the pain of each individual the whole world over. Such is her appetite for hymning this endless cycle of suffering, and so sparse and intense her delivery of songs such as ''Scorn Not His Simplicity'' (written by Phil Coulter), ''In This Heart'' and ''Tiny Grief Song'' (the latter pair performed a cappella), that the album ultimately assumes a pseudo-religious dimension. Her singing ranges from a little-girl-lost whisper, as on a peculiarly affecting version of Kurt Cobain's ''All Apologies'' (and why on earth shouldn't she record one of his songs?), to the tortured wail of the opening track ''Fire On Babylon'', a song which might best be described as a musical approximation of Munch's painting The Scream. But her best shot on this rather exhausting collection is '''Famine''', a rap about the Irish potato famine of 1845-47 (which she insists never really happened, hence the extra set of inverted commas around the title), intercut with snatches from the chorus of the Beatles' ''Eleanor Rigby''. ''We're suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder,'' she proclaims against a grumbling hip-hop bass riff. Well, it's one way of breaking free of the old moonJune routine.