One-Track Wonder

I finished watching the second season of USA Network's very worthwhile In Plain Sight. The show is about a US Marshal who works in the federal Witness Security program (what most people incorrectly refer to as "witness protection"). It's wry and funny, the characters are very nicely drawn and played, and the show made some great strides in its storytelling this season.

Typically, they left us with a cliffhanger that won't be resolved until the show returns next spring. But as the final scenes of the episode played out, they were accompanied by a striking piece of music that grabbed my attention. It was unfamiliar to me, but the show's web site is courteous enough to list songs that are featured in the episodes, so I browsed over to check it out.

I was stunned to learn that the song, called "The Lightning Strike," was by Snow Patrol, the Irish band responsible for that horrible, insipid weeper ballad "Chasing Cars." You know the one, "If I lay here/If I just lay here/Would you lie with me/And just forget the world?..." Ecch, just typing that makes me feel ill. I never would have guessed the two songs could possibly be by the same band.

I only heard a minute or so of "The Lightning Strike" during the show, but it turns out that what I heard was just the beginning; the song is made up of three "movements" and clocks in at around 16 minutes long (link to listen here). Unfortunately, the other two parts of the song are not as impressive as the first, and they probably should have been three separate songs, but I'm just a snarky blogger so what do I know?

And of course, you can't buy the song by itself at iTunes; you have to buy the whole album to get it. while that other piece of dreck is on a different album, I still don't think I'm going to be interested in the rest of this one, based on a quick sampling of the other tracks. Anyone got a copy?