Let's face it: the underground rock hero is a dying breed. It's being wiped out by the hip ethic that defines pop culture these days as the press and MTV diligently champion alternative music – whatever that means – and continually search for the next little band that could. Like Soul Asylum. This Minneapolis quartet toiled in lowrent obscurity for almost a decade before it was finally embraced by the mainstream. Acceptance came thanks to "Runaway Train," a single from Soul Asylum's 1992 album Grave Dancers Union. After years spent standing in the shadows, their ratty-haired frontman, Dave Pirner, suddenly became the Midwestern poster boy for crossover cutting-edge cool. With its newest album, Let Your Dim Light Shine, the band continues unabashedly in that more accessible, middle-of-the-road direction.

And that shouldn't come as a total shock. For all of Soul Asylum's alternative clout, "Runaway Train" was a classic heartland pop song – a car-radio sing-along fueled by the sort of tender sentiment, gritty vocals and meat-and-potatoes melodic hooks you would expect from Tom Petty or John Mellencamp. Although Soul Asylum staked their early reputation on raw, scrappy potency, the half-dozen albums they released prior to Union show a fairly steady progression toward a folkier sound. Punk credibility be damned – now that Pirner is dating a movie star, not even a collection of hardcore cover versions could have kept that intact. Graceful and buoyant throughout, Shine succeeds primarily on pure pop instinct, the virtue that distinguishes any pop success story that lasts longer than 15 minutes.

In many ways, Shine is also Soul Asylum's most adventurous album to date. Enlisting producer Butch Vig was a coup; his work on Nirvana's Nevermind proved that great pop music can take chances without sacrificing its elegance. Vig lends the group's new songs a pronounced sense of tension and drama. His typically theatrical use of dynamics is key here and strikingly effective on tracks like "Crawl," which offsets delicate, chiming verses with crashing choruses, and "Nothing to Write Home About," which reverses that pattern, swinging between verses that rock forcefully and choruses that whisper with hushed restraint. "Caged Rat" jars pleasantly, veering from spacey funk passages to a thrash-and-burn refrain.

Soul Asylum's use of rhythm, never a strong point, has now grown bolder and more sophisticated. Shortly before sessions for the album began, longtime drummer Grant Young was fired and replaced by Sterling Campbell, a session veteran who had contributed some percussion to Grave Dancers Union. It was a savvy move. In addition to the hip-hop thrashing on "Caged Rat," Campbell dazzles on "String of Pearls," on which he shifts from a gentle folk tempo to a driving disco beat.

In contrast, Pirner's scratchy, nasal voice is still an instrument of limited emotional range. His forte as both a singer and as a writer is the expression of post-adolescent angst, the clichéd Gen-X variety. "We could start a company ... Frustrated Incorporated," he growls on "Misery," the catchy opening track. Later he sings about dysfunctional families ("Eyes of a Child") and dysfunctional relationships ("Shut Down"). And on "To My Own Devices" he spins a vague tale that involves getting drunk and meeting a waitress who once served Elvis, flaunting his enduring infatuation with white-trash imagery. Pirner's love songs, if you could call them that, often seem curiously oblique and lack any real sexual intensity. But this vagueness is the rule with modern male rock singers, from patron saint Michael Stipe on down to his disciples.

In Pirner's case, fortunately, such shortcomings are redeemed by the vitality and tenderness of his melodies. Beneath their complex arrangements, "String of Pearls" and "Eyes of a Child" are simple and radiant folk-pop tunes. Guitarist Dan Murphy supplies gorgeous and lyrical playing on these numbers and on the country-flavored "To My Own Devices" and "I Did My Best."

Overall, Let Your Dim Light Shine is a satisfying pop album because it's an unapologetic one. Given the current obsession with maintaining alternative cachet, it would hardly be surprising if the band followed its commercial breakthrough with a flagrantly left-of-center effort. Instead the group has demonstrated that, musically speaking, it wears mainstream acceptance as comfortably as flannel shirts. Soul Asylum surely aren't clinging to some tired notion of punk purity. Perhaps these guys realize that for underground heroes turned pop stars, prolonged success is the best revenge. (RS 710)

ELYSA GARDNER