Cliffie Swan + Pitchfork = 7.3

Not sure how that math works, but thank the lightning and tornado filled skies it does!

Long ago, there was a band called Lights. They changed their name to Cliffie Swan (lots of people change their names, so clam it, bub!) and Drag City have released Memories Come True on LP/CD. Pitchfork awoke from a lengthy Bon Iver induced slumber, and gave it a 7.3, among other accolades ~

"Memories' first three songs prove its most immediately ingratiating; after 'Chain', the husky 'Soft and Mean" gets a little snarl going -- Knapp's cooly delivered kiss-off of, 'you know, your attitude, it really wrecks my mood,' cuts to the quick-- and the Cars-like 'Yes I Love You' strips things back so far the hook can't help but jut out. They may be making fewer moves on these lean, chorus-heavy tunes than they did flitting between styles on Rites, but they seem more confident in each one."

"Just as the disc's knotty pop lead-in often calls to mind Fleetwood Mac without ever quite going full McVie, there's something about this mid-LP mix of vocal serenity and bleary guitar crunch that suggests they've been rummaging around in the mid-90s buzzbin. But they've gotten so good at couching even their more obvious influences in threads of ambling melody that any easy comparisons seem somehow beside the point. That's a big shift from Rites, an album that seemed most impressive for the derring-do of its genre-stacking. Echoes of everything from the Breeders to Black Sabbath may ring throughout Memories now and again, but there's a serenity and self-possession driving these tunes that isn't on loan from any other band."

"Cliffie Swan's airy melodic excursions might be several degrees less daring than Lights' exploratory pop-psych, it's both easier to like and easier to grok."

I'll give anyone a dollar who will define "grok". **

** one Monopoly dollar.