Today's Hotness: David & The Citizens, Small Factory, Silkworm

>> Friendly Fire Records brings news that Swedish indie pop luminaries David & The Citizens have returned with a free four-song digital EP entitled I Saw My Reflection And I Didn't Recognize MySelf. The set -- self-released about a month ago in tandem with fronter David Fridlund's birthday -- contains four piano-anchored winners whose strongest tracks are the dark, cinematic ballad "Anything" and the opener "With Every New Day." Both tracks are certainly worth a lot more than free, but who are we to refuse the largesse of the prolific Mr. Fridlund? The former song reminds us obliquely of Shout Out Louds' epic album closer "Hard Rain," at least in tone. According to a jpg'd letter in the .zip file that contains the songs [1, 2, 3], David & The Citizens at this point is simply Fridlund, as his band members quit en masse last February. But Fridlund is adamant that David & The Citizens is still an entity until he himself quits the band, an action he strongly considered but ultimately rejected last year.

We most recently wrote here about David & The Citizens on the occasion of Friendly Fire's U.S. release of Until The Sadness Is Gone in late 2006. Well, in the interest of accuracy and now that we've actually looked, we most recently wrote here about the availability of the band's Stop The Tape! Stop The Tape! at EMusic around the same time. The entirety of I Saw My Reflection And I Didn't Recognize Myself is available as a zip file. The link is posted below, along with an MP3 of "Anything" to whet your appetite. David & The Citizens' web site contains a bounty of music you can stream and download; hit this link and be prepared to lose the better part of an hour.

David & The Citizens -- "Anything" -- I Saw My Reflection And I Didn't Recognize Myself
[right click and save as]
[download the entire EP as a .zip here]
[buy David & The Citizens records from Adrian Recordings here]

>> In the wake of our referencing Small Factory and The Godrays last week we've come across a couple things of interest. First, our friend Matt has posted streams of the two Small Factory full-lengths I Do Not Love You and For If You Cannot Fly here and here respectively. So if you are trapped at your computo and need some exemplary indie rock, there you go. Another thing: while we linked to the Sit-N-Spin label page for The Godrays last week, we made no mention that there are three MP3s posted there from the Godrays final EP Well Composed Death Notice, including the powerful closer "Shark Shaped Ship." We'll post that track below, but hit the link supra to grab MP3s for "Hope This Makes Sheryl Crow Happy" and "Poor Grace" from the EP. And finally, we were able to track via New Jersey's Greatest Living DJ a copy of the "Small Factory Live!" VHS a year or two ago. After some delay, H-Dawg From Accounts Receivable was able to get the VHS converted to DVD for us, and we're thinking that some time soon we'll try to get the thing ripped and posted to YouTube. We've never ripped video before, so if anybody can bullet point it for us in an email, that'd be hot.

The Godrays -- "Shark Shaped Ship" -- Well Composed Death Notice
[right click and save as]
[buy Godrays recordings from Sit-N-Spin here]

>> Habitual readers know that we here at Clicky Clicky keep one eagle eye steadily on Bradley's Almanac, for obvious reasons. We're here to remind you to maintain a zen-quality focus on the site for a post relating to some outstanding acoustic -- and at least for us hard to find -- Silkworm recordings that Mr. 'Nac and we had occasion to discuss over the weekend after said songs popped into our head. We had had the four songs on a tape back in the day, but found ourselves coming up short when perusing our two beer boxes full of cassettes.