Tommy Swerdlow has had a pretty odd career. After a brief stint as an actor (highlighted by an extremely small sidekick role in the cult classic Real Genius alongside Val Kilmer and Michelle Meyrink), he pursued standup comedy and spoken word poetry, releasing a spoken word album, 1993's
Prisoner of the Gifted Sleep, on SST's artsy subsidiary New Alliance Records. At the same time, he followed an undoubtedly more financially pleasurable path as a Hollywood screenwriter, highlighted by the sweet, funny Disney family comedy Cool Runnings (the one about the Jamaican bobsled team) and, unfortunately, the execrable Cuba Gooding, Jr. vehicle Snow Dogs. All along, he and his vocalist/multi-instrumentalist wife
Karen Swerdlow have been quietly working on a musical career culminating in the release of
Sad Girl's
Twenty Years, featuring
Tommy's lyrics set to
Karen's music. Unfortunately, the album is closer to the Snow Dogs end of the spectrum.
Karen Swerdlow's tunes are dramatic and moody in the style of
Fiona Apple or
Michael Penn, but lacking their melodic gifts. The album's real fault, however, is in
Tommy's pretentious and wordy lyrics, which for some reason tend to be sent through a variety of distancing vocal effects, which so distract the listener from the lyrical content that any potential merit is lost. The Swerdlows are clearly talented folks, but
Twenty Years is a poor showcase for what they can do.