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Dwight Twilley has got to be one of the most energetic singers of love songs around. His latest album, Scuba Divers (EMI America/Capitol), shows him in fine form, belting out songs about his loves – past, present and future.
Twilley’s vehicle is straight, hard, rhythmic rock, honeyed over with lots of lush harmony vocals. Guitars and keyboards merely add more layers to the sound, what little lead that is done by these instruments being lost to the ongoing surge.
Twilley gets some help from Benmont Tench of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers, and Danny Kortchmar, who comes into public view most often in the presence of Jackson Browne, Twilley also employs John Cowsill, as his principal drummer and as a background vocalist, plus Susan and Jan Cowsill as background vocalists, with Susan supplying most of the harmonies. Remember the harmonies of the Cowsills from 1967 and 1968? Here they are again fronting a pile driver rock band with a maniac lover running the show.
What the scuba diver motif means is anybody’s guess, as is the meaning of 10,000 American Scuba Divers Dancin’, one of the songs on the first side. Maybe Twilley answers it himself in the song with the hardly discursive statement: “What it means is what it means is what it really means.”
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