Rating: 🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸

Spoilers: Death Cab For Cutie

I do this really annoying thing when people come to my house and I’ve put some “background” music on.

“I love this part,” I say.

I say this phrase partly because I want everyone to join me in loving this part; and partly because I am obsessed with moments in music more than I am actual songs.

I haven’t done it with this song yet, but I have plans to do it with You Are A Tourist, the best song on Death Cab’s worst record Codes And Keys. The moment in question happens at exactly three-minutes-and-ten-seconds. This is—in my frustratingly maleable opinion—the band’s greatest musical moment.

Please give this track a good listen and pay some special attention to this moment when it arrives.

In any good rock outfit like DCFC, there’s a drummer (Jason McGerr), a bassist (Nick Harmer), and more-often-than-not two guitarists (Gibbard & Walla) who are playing two different models of guitar. One of those guitars is always a Fender Telecaster (Tele) but that runs counter to my eventual metaphor so please ignore that fact.

Teles are known as an extremely versatile guitar, which is why they’re seen in so many bands and, for that matter, genres. In this track, Gibbard is playing a semi-hollow body Tele. Stock Teles normally come with two single-coil pickups: one near the bridge of the guitar where the twangy and articulate high-midrange frequencies are at their most insistent and one nearer the neck where warmer, rounder, and more luscious tones meditate. There’s a three-position-switch on a Tele that can activate either—or both—of these pickups.

The particular Tele that Gibbard is using here is further modified by replacing the neck pickup with a double coiled pickup—also known as a humbucker. Humbuckers create a warmer tone than a single coil pickup does. So, making this substitution on the neck pickup is like wearing a cardigan under your overcoat. This makes this particular guitar even more versatile than the original model that is known for being fucking versatile.

Telecasters are the Christian Bale of guitars.

On the other hand, Chris Walla is playing a Gretsch. I don’t want to spend too much longer on this so I’m just gonna come out and say it: Matt Damon is a Gretsch. Gretschs have a focused, punchy, and goddamned classic sound that just feel good to hang out with. The tone of a Gretsch isn’t exactly unversatile, but it is unique and very unapologetically American. Chet Atkins played one.

Ford v Ferrari is James Mangold’s new car racing drama starring Christian Bale and Matt Damon. You don’t have to like cars to like it. When I first heard about this movie, I thought, “Which one is playing Ferrari?” So yeah, don’t worry—you’ll be fine.

This movie is aggressively perfect for Thanksgiving*. There’s some on-the-nose music queues to let you know that the characters have made up their mind to move the plot along, there’s two garage-flirting scenes that end in dancing, and there’s Matt Damon in a cowboy hat.

Mangold’s self-professed directing philosophy is to serve the story first—to get out of the way and never let style (or genre) muffle substance. It’s why 3:10 To Yuma doesn’t really feel like a western despite its setting and gun-fights. It’s why Logan is the only X-Men movie that Martin Scorsese might watch on a plane.

I’ve always been more of a style driven kind of guy when it comes to movies. I like when Tarantino winks at me. I like when the Coen Brothers get all Coen Brothers-y and shit. I thought I was going to like Only God Forgives before I found out it was just Drive without Brian Cranston to ground it out. Don’t dissect these takes unless you want to be as disappointed as I was watching Only God Forgives.

As my perfect guitar metaphor laid out, Christian and Matt are different types of actors. To be cheeky: Bale is essentially a more prolific (and therefore more inconsistent version of) Daniel Day-Lewis. Damon is a more prolific (and somehow more consistent) version of his best bud, Ben Affleck. Hold up while I recast this movie with DDL and Affleck . . . Holy shit, that actually works.

I was seated in the back row of the theater in which I saw this movie and I think that was a bit of a hindrance to my experience. Some of the film’s best moments felt dependant on a sensory immersion that just doesn’t translate to the kids in the back. Despite the two-hour-and-thirty-two-minute runtime, I think I might have had a better time if I sat in the front row? I don’t know. My neck can’t take that.

Make no mistake, this is a movie about car racing. There’s maybe two scenes in which an automobile isn’t present? But, there’s something less slapstick about the auto-worship here than in say The Fast and the Furious franchise or Gone in 60 Seconds.

Twice, Damon is watching Bale compete from the sidelines. He focuses in as Bale maneuvers his vehicle precisely through some tight corners. But instead of just observing, he quietly articulates commands as if he has a direct line into Bale’s ears. “Not yet… not yet… NOW.”

The film cuts to the shift stick inside the car and Bale moves it in place—perfectly on queue. Nice.

Look, this is a sports movie. The plot is simple. The characters say what they want and what they are willing to do to get it. It’s got “versus” in the title. The 24 Hours Of Le Mans is an athletic competition and that’s an idea the film pushes.

The car is important and so is the man driving it. Damon is the coach. Bale is the athlete. The car is the ball? Think: Remember The Titans but less about integration and more about great Adidas cleats.

***

I don’t know that I ever really 100% related to Ben Gibbard’s lyrics in any kind of literal way. This is pretty bonkers considering you can normally dissect a DCFC song in real time. I think this fact is what I related to more than the content itself. There’s no smoke and mirrors.

In You Are A Tourist, Gibbard’s Telecaster shows us the songs defining melody early on. It’s youthful, clever, and a little contained. The song continues and now we’re nearing this moment that I have insisted I make this piece about for some stupid reason when I clearly should have taken some sort of car-movie angle. Gibbard is playing that hook again. It’s going well. Walla is getting a little post-rock on us just to remind us that he’s one of the greatest tone-crafters of the century. McGerr’s got the hi-hats tight as hell because this is a Death Cab track damnit! Harmer is just kind of throwing fastballs on the bass. Then, all of a sudden McGerr opens up and hits two crash cymbals at once for the first time since Transatlanticism and both guitars join together and just rock that fucking hook. “NOW.” I raise my fist out the the cardigan pocket where it was hidden and shout and I’m in the front row and I’m drunk as hell and I mosh like Ginger Rogers hearing jazz for the first time and an old man tips his cap towards me in approval.

The second time Damon is telepathically coaching Bale comes in the film’s true climax.

It slaps. The stakes are high. Damon and Bale are both all the way fuckin in and the car is loud as shit. The proverbial Gretsch and Tele are just like “Let’s just race this fucking car for a second.”

Bale maneuvers around the Ferrari to get a clean look at some open track.

Damon chews a lil gum, “Not yet…”

Bale feels the cold rush of wind on his cheeks bringing a clear moment that only comes when craft reveals art.

“NOW.”

Excelsior!

However ...

The most important piece of this puzzle is that there’s not a ton of lavish cinematic painting going on. That’s not what Mangold does. He just throws fastballs. This isn’t Baby Driver where Edgar Wright is whipping you around like Fred Astair. This is a story about two guys who lived on the frontier of mechanized speed. The exhaust stains your skin. The engine rings your ears. The vision turns your stomach. The body of a guitar only exists to allow for the execution of its inner coiling. You don’t even see all that shit when you’re in the cockpit of a machine. You just feel it.

I love that part.

*My favorite things that happen in the movie are actually two scenes towards the beginning of the film. Henry Ford II stops a factory full of auto-workers to yell at them in front of his other executives that someone better bring him an idea. LOL. Everyone else can seek employment elsewhere. Good leadership! Then, ostensibly in the following days, sexy Lee Iacocca is presenting an idea to him in a boardroom and his projector jams and all the other execs are just like “Fuck this! Why are you wasting our time with IDEAS?!” The thing is, this is all kind of just presented as plot? The movie, despite Mangold’s personal feelings, doesn’t really want to say one way or the other how it feels about these guys. Maybe I’m asking too much? I don’t know. That’s what I mean by aggressively perfect for Thanksgiving.

FORD v FERRARI: The Best Song On Death Cab’s Worst Record