Give Up The Fight: In Memory of Thad Bawkon

“You wake up to a thousand lights”—my sleeping consciousness hears instead the words, 'a thousand lies'. It doesn't matter; her voice pulls me into the morning, past alarm clocks and my arms flailing at my electronics. I'm listening to the Ultrasounds, and Sara Griffin is singing the tune 'After You Close Your Eyes'. She's playing drums too, balancing the possibilities of noise and subtleties against Patrick Betzold on guitar and Christopher Smith on bass and piano. They're driving me out of bed with the words, “we are all we are,” and something that feels like energy is traveling up my arms in spikes.

This is a CD to wake up to. The second nine-track album for this Ann Arbor-based band, Give Up The Fight has a number of bold, almost distorted tunes that still hold a clear solidity at their center. 'For Elliott', a tribute song to Elliott Smith, is dark and brooding. Written about, and to, a man whose image fits into the mood of this song, 'For Elliott' shimmers with Christopher Smith on vocals, piano, and bass. It invites stillness, the kind where I sit down with my shoes halfway on and forget to tie the laces while inadvertently memorizing the lyrics.

Then there's another one of Sara's songs, called 'I'm Always Right,' moving along in an easy, almost rustic style. There's a certain innocence about her voice, and the way she sings the first lines, “Eighteen on the dot—you think that's a lot,” that puzzle-pieces right into the old, jangly piano and the violin provided by Mark Wallace. The simplicity of this short tune makes it instantly familiar, an old friend saying hello.

The album finishes off with the bonus track, 'All The Things We Did Today.' This is the last song—the song to leave on—the song that makes me late to work because I can't make my feet walk out the door before it ends. The drum-beat is electronic, but don't worry, Sara's still there, adding her voice to Smith's. They're sounding a little wistful, a little nostalgic—at odds with some of the earlier, more brazen tunes on the album, like 'Life On The Wire' and '1974'. The song isn't happy or sad, exactly—when it finishes I am moody and thoughtful, and wanting more.

The half-hour length of this album makes it perfect for my morning routine—or it would if I could refrain from stopping the process so I can listen to the next line, the next stanza, the next song. All of the tracks are worth taking the three or five minutes to hear them—but why not go listen for yourself?