John Lurie: African Swim And Manny & Lo

For a somewhat obscure figure, John Lurie has been very much in the public eye lately. Last year, his long-running jazz band the Lounge Lizards released the great Queen Of All Ears, and Lurie also wrote, directed, and acted in the cult TV series Fishing With John. Raising his profile even further, Lurie founded the Strange & Beautiful Music label to release (or resurrect) several of his most sought-after film scores and records. Following Queen Of All Ears, the 1989 Lounge Lizards album Voice Of Chunk, the soundtrack to Jim Jarmusch's Stranger Than Paradise, and the quirky soundtrack to Fishing With John comes this twofer soundtrack: African Swim And Manny & Lo. The former film has never been released; the latter was the oddball directorial debut of Lisa Krueger, who worked on Jarmusch's Down By Law and Mystery Train. Since Lurie's work with the Lounge Lizards is so eclectic to begin with, about the only thing differentiating these soundtrack cuts from his Lounge Lizards tracks is length: Most of African Swim And Manny & Lo is made up of Lounge Lizard-esque fragments, albeit fragments creatively performed by some of Lurie's most talented sidemen, including guitarist Marc Ribot and Medeski Martin & Wood. However, amidst the strange and beautiful movie music collected here, much of it inflected with African elements, are two hilarious stand-out novelties: On the African Swim half, Lurie offers a dead-on Barry White impression with "Big Trouble," while Manny & Lo boasts a bit of goofy ersatz punk-rock with "She's Not A Nurse." Those two eccentric tracks aside, the music Lurie composed for these soundtracks provides yet another reminder of his brilliance and dedication to doing things differently.