A SOULFUL ASYLUM

Soul Asylum has a lot riding on this MTV Unplugged session, and lead singer/ resident babe Dave Pirner looks tense. He tosses his appropriately skanky blond mane self-consciously and makes forced chitchat before an audience of 300 at New York City's Sony Studios, where the session is being taped to air June 2. Pirner's tension has more to do with the 10-year-old Minneapolis band's need for a hit song than with stage fright. While their latest album, the lush Grave Dancers Union, has just gone gold, it hasn't yet been the commercial breakthrough the foursome had hoped for. Combined with savvy promotion for its critical second single-the beautiful, elegiac ''Runaway Train''-a great Unplugged performance could give the album the chart fuel it needs. Relax, Dave. The Asylum fanatics here haven't come for stage patter. They sit patiently through several delays, clearly don't need to be guided through practice rounds of applause by the set manager, and good-naturedly tolerate the dolly cameras that frequently obscure their view. They don't care because they know Soul Asylum, long worshiped in alternative-rock circles for the sound and fury of its live shows, will bash out a stellar set. And they're right. Drawing heavily from Grave Dancers, the band shakes up the mix by using strings on both ''Black Gold''-a violinist bows a waterphone, giving the song an eerie, psychedelic air-and a muscular ''Somebody to Shove,'' their packed-with-attitude first single from Grave Dancers. Fluid session player Ivan Neville sits in on keyboards, and a career-revived Lulu joins Pirner on a surprise, soulful duet of her 1967 hit, ''To Sir With Love,'' which the group has covered in concert but never on disc. Near the end of the 100-minute set, Pirner, a bit more relaxed, razzes guitarist Dan Murphy when technical glitches force them to redo a few songs. ''Dan f -- -ed that one up,'' he says about ''Shove.'' The band sails through the retakes, the fans embracing them with Unplugged's trademark laid-back intimacy-well, with the exception of one female fan who screams, ''Give me a baby, Dave!'' But then this is rock & roll.