BIBJ Playlist of the 2000s entry #39: The Lure Would Prove Too Much by The Twilight Singers

Full Details of the BIBJ Millennial Playlist Hullabaloo are available here. Today's entry is #39: The Lure Would Prove Too Much by The Twilight Singers (2007)


Certain bands make the transition to visual soundtracks particularly well. The Rolling Stones are perhaps the poster children of excellence through film, as a scientific poll conducted exclusively by me has found the Stones to sound 87% better on film soundtracks than simply on their own. More recently, the Explosions in the Sky/Friday Night Lights merger has led to a sum greater than the individual components. Likewise, it’s no coincidence that the Swell Season album failed to create much initial buzz, but when those same songs were put on-screen in Once a year later, they clearly connected on a more powerful level. And I can't possibly be the only one who hears Cat Stevens in that cell phone ad and immediately thinks "I'd like to watch Harold and Maude right now." While Grey’s Anatomy, The Hills, and TV ads have turned the integration into a pattern of underwhelming cross-promotion, the marriage of music and film still holds quite a bit of weight when done properly

Greg Dulli’s songs always strike me as stunningly cinematic in nature. True, each of them basically seem to be about either sex or drugs, but the composition of each is epic in overall grittiness and layering. When I am made the President of Movies, I will dictate that every scene containing the protagonist coming to grips with his or her place in the world be scored with an Afghan Whigs/Twilight Singers/Gutter Twins selection.

I am not alone in this line of thinking, as Denis Leary has proven. Not only did he help Dulli get cast in the underwhelming Monument Ave., but he's used full Twilight Singers tracks in multiple Rescue Me scenes. This scene from last season showcases The Lure Would Prove To Much, and it proves a few theories:

1. Slow-motion always looks better.
2. Slow-motion FIRE always looks AMAZING.
3. Does anyone else share my fear that death may come from the inability to pull ones self up with just ones fingertips? This scene does nothing to lessen my uneasiness.
4. It's got to be a great feeling when writing a script to just put down "6-minute Twilight Singers montage" and let the director figure it out. That's three less pages of work!