Dan Fogelberg has grown from a promising singer/songwriter into the most popular romantic illustrator of smart California wallpaper. Defined by diffuse, monochromatic guitar textures, lead vocals that sound like heavenly chorales, dreamily streamlined rhythms and a yearning, mystical sensibility that's attracted to nineteenth-century classical music as much as to rock & roll, Fogelberg's billowy style, with its wistful earnestness and childlike diction, echoes Graham Nash more than any other contemporary artist.

Twin Sons of Different Mothers–which flautist Tim Weisberg coproduced with Fogelberg and on which he's a featured instrumentalist–tries to reconcile Fogelberg's "higher" aspirations with his rock impulses by juxtaposing seven mostly short orchestral interludes with three full-scale vocal showcases, each of which supposedly represents a different side of the singer. Judy Collins' "Since You've Asked" and the Hollies' "Tell Me to My Face" respectively exemplify the pastoral and passionate leanings, while Fogelberg's own "The Power of Gold" shows him at his most serious and silly. Alas, this alleged warning against greed, with its vague talk about the selling of souls and the losing of dreams, has nothing specific to say about the good life except "The women are lovely/The wine is superb." Some warning!

Though pleasant enough, the instrumentals, which gloss styles from Chopin to Antonio Carlos Jobim to a bouncy Chuck Mangione, amount to little more than gauzy trim around the centerpiece, a seven-minute production of "Tell Me to My Face" that's so stinging it makes everything else sound trivial. The Hollies' directness is a welcome change from the stilted courtliness and ineffable cast of Fogelberg's own pronouncements. And Weisberg's agitated flute runs skittering above the singer's multitracked guitars and partially submerged vocals add to an already impressive tour de force. It's a shame that Dan Fogelberg should be willing to settle for kitsch commercial artiness so much of the time when he's capable of creating studio rock this strong. (RS 280)

STEPHEN HOLDEN