John Lurie – Music from the Series, Painting With John 2LP
After a decades-long retreat from releasing music, the former Lounge Lizard John Lurie dipped into his deep well of instrumental work to update his classic fishing show, Fishing with John, with a bunch of mish-mash miniatures for his HBO show Painting with John. This is a great portal into a brilliant, underrated composer. Buy that next Lounge Lizard record or CD (still cheap!) you see and behold. (Then check his brother Evan Lurie’s work.)
In the penultimate episode of his widely popular and critically acclaimed HBO series, Painting with John, its creator, John Lurie, sits in a Manhattan recording studio, working out musical parts for the show’s soundtrack. “After the illness started, I didn’t think I’d ever be able to do this again,” said Lurie.
Even as he occupies an enigmatic, multi-faceted, five-decade career characterized by the unexpected, perhaps even Lurie is surprised by this new release of a double-album collection of music, Painting with John, extracted from the series.
The 56-track set borrows from Lurie’s library of pre-existing creations ranging from indie soundtracks, Manny and Lo and African Swim, and the exhumed discography of Lurie’s fictive bluesman, Marvin Pontiac, and even back to The Lounge Lizards, as well as new pieces written and performed to align with the show’s panorama of narratives. The work rises from the seeds of the blues, exults in polyrhythmic exhales of African music, rides absurdist, elliptical chants, and drapes vignettes in greasy, funky noir.
It’s a journey; a travelogue of genre, style, and invention as fluid and evocative as the artist. Pure of intent, and engaging at every turn, Painting with John is both companion and stand-alone; both detailed soundtrack and joyous summary. “This may be the last thing I do,” Lurie says. “I want it to be beautiful.”