On the fourth installment in the series, those movies are noirs. Like the film genre they were influenced by, what makes these songs “noirish” is sometimes slippery and hard to define, and not merely reducible to a collection of tropes. The scores for the great american noir pictures were largely orchestral, while the Carpenters and Davies work off a sturdy synth-and-guitar backbone.

The noir quality, then, is something you understand instinctively when you hear it, as in connected in an emotional way. The trio’s free-flowing chemistry means 'Lost Themes IV: Noir' runs like a well-oiled machine — the 1951 Jaguar XK120 roadster from Kiss Me Deadly, perhaps, or the 1958 Plymouth fury from John’s own Christine. it’s a chemistry that’s helped power one of the most productive stretches of John’s creative life, and noir proves that it’s nowhere near done yielding brilliant results.

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