Painting with John

The soundtrack to multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, painter, and kitchen-sink philosopher John Luries 2024 TV show Painting with John captures the maverick artists eclectic and stylistically wide-ranging taste. A follow-up to Luries previous series, Fishing with John, Painting with John is a meditative production in which the founding Lounge Lizards bandleader invites viewers into his home as he paints, relates stories about his life to camera, and interacts with his family. The results are at turns wry and insightful, marked by Luries darkly skewed sense of humor and exploratory worldview. Primarily a saxophonist and guitarist, Lurie crafts evocative, rootsy songs for the show, digging into his avant-garde jazz, classical, folk, and post-rock influences. These are a mix of instrumental and vocal songs (some are new versions of songs off past Lurie albums), and some are more composed than others with most of the tracks clocking in under three minutes. The main theme, "African Swim," finds Lurie contrasting a picked banjo against moody synths before a reedy classical chamber score kicks in. He also dips into several twangy, guitar-centric Afrobeat grooves, as on "Al Al Al Al" and "Bird Rules the Herd," while cuts like "Goodbye to Peach" and "Flutter" showcase his clarinet and sax skills as he blends improvisational jazz and world music traditions. Often, Lurie draws upon a postmodern Dada and beat poet aesthetic, as on "A Goat Says Fuck," where he repeats the songs title phrase over a swell of wordless hums and saxophone harmonies. Ultimately, Painting with John plays like a soundtrack diary to Luries life as he offers short musical entries that reflect his seemingly mundane, often funny, and oddly profound thoughts and experiences. ~ Matt Collar