What Noir Means To Me

If I think back, my connection to noir started as far back as I can remember. My childhood memories play like a silent movie, one that my adult mind has since colored with sound. Walking with my mother, rolling a biscuit tin over my grandmother’s carpet, staring up from the backseat of a white Triumph Dolomite as silhouetted trees rushed past. I noticed things. The happy couple canoodling. The suited man with a briefcase and newspaper sprinting for a train. The bored shop girl smoking on her break. The homeless man, head between knees, crying—or maybe just remembering to breathe. To the casual observer, I was just a quiet, curious kid, watching the everyday with the cocked head of a puppy. In hindsight, those small, observed moments were my first encounters with the noir aesthetic—beauty and melancholy existing in the same frame.

I wasn’t a Star Wars kid. I wasn’t a rough-and-tumble GI Joe (or “Action Man,” in England) kid. My “jam” was Looney Tunes, Lego, then guitar. Thanks to a wild-haired scientist and a Nike-wearing slacker, I also daydreamed of time travel. That led me to Quantum Leap—Sam Beckett, the Swiss cheese-brained physicist traveling through time to put right what once went wrong. Tuesdays at 8 p.m., BBC2. Only years later did I realize the show’s structure perfectly embodied the five-point narrative arc I now teach at the University of Washington: exposition, rising tension, climax, falling action, resolution. Every episode was a narrative “Turducken”: story within story within story.

Quantum Leap was not film noir. At most, it was cyberpunk-lite. But it opened a door. As the credits rolled to a bouncy Mike Post synth theme, BBC2’s limited advertising gave way to a darker synth—mournful, slow, and full of longing. A robin’s gaze. Smoke from a sawmill. A rushing waterfall. Green sans-serif letters: “Twin Peaks.” I was entranced. David Lynch and Mark Frost cracked a window into the black, and I climbed inside without hesitation. My musical discoveries turned sepia-toned; my natural affinity for shadows backlit.

I’ll never forget the look on my uncle’s face when, a few months later, I overheard him and his girlfriend discussing Twin Peaks. Imagine their surprise when an eleven-year-old chimed in to say the Black Lodge represented a dream-space where we make sense of the chaos of the world. He was horrified I knew what they were talking about; she was amused and agreed it was a valid interpretation. They debated whether the show was too sexy or scary for me; but that white horse had already left the Roadhouse. Then and now, neither sex nor horror is the point. Those are surface hooks. What stayed with me was the mood—the unsettling quiet, the moments where mystery lingered unresolved. That was noir.

To me, noir is an aesthetic that provokes an emotional response—my own first and foremost. It’s not just glitz and glamour set against the grit of urban decay (though those are part of classic noir’s visual vocabulary). It’s beauty in the mundane. Wonder in the unremarkable. An awkwardly ordinary situation where a certain light and sound fall around painfully human action, emotion, and reaction. It’s narrative without resolution. A mirror wheeled into my consciousness by mysterious hands, confirming my existential dread. The surface details give noir its stylistic identity, but at its core it inspires my creativity.

Low Throes is the result of nearly 50 years of observing and listening—from my early years in the U.K., through travels across America, down and up the West Coast, and along the Pacific Rim. The band is a conduit for the sounds in my head and my soul, without compromise. The direct lines of inspiration connect to artists like Chris Isaak, Morphine, Nick Cave, The The, Ennio Morricone, Calexico, Anna Calvi, Nina Simone, Diamanda Galás, and Tom Waits. Listen closely and you may also catch traces of Berlin, Kim Wilde, Eurythmics, and The Go-Go’s. Yet none of these fully capture my individual perspective or narrative. More than the artists I admire, Low Throes is shaped by the fictional characters in our lyrics—characters born from observations or overheard lines gathered along my journey. They’re not meant as noir clichés (though “Amona” comes closest to being our femme fatale). They’re meant to be relatable, much like how I relate to noir itself: as a feeling of cinematic or musical empathy born from a banal but perfectly lit reflection.

Our songs are structurally pop—verse-chorus-verse—simple, catchy (for some), with rhythms you can sway to without much thought. Mark Sandman once called Morphine’s music “Low Rock.” I call Low Throes Noir Pop.

I’m not a noir expert. But like most things in life, I’m here to learn. The essays published on lowthroes.com are as much the product of my research notes and deep dives into film noir history as they are a resource for others who share this fascination—and yes, they’re also an unabashed SEO experiment, meant to lure unsuspecting noir enthusiasts into meeting Low Throes’ cast of characters and soundtrack. My hope is that those fellow travelers will find us a worthy addition to some dim-lit corner of the genre’s musical canon—perhaps with an occasional strobe.

Tim Mudd
August 2025
Seattle, WA, USA