Since the first 'Lost Themes', John has referred to these compositions as 'soundtracks for the movies in your mind.' 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.