Today we’ve got some big names in  indie music for you! How about My Morning Jacket’s singer Jim James, who calls himself Yim Yames on his new record? He provides us with beautiful stripped down versions of George Harrison songs on the EP Tribute To. This is how we like Yim Yames the best. Sober, intense and fragile. We can’t believe how My Morning Jacket changed in the years. From the fantastic The Tennessee Fire and At Dawn to the rather poor Evil Urges from last year. Since Tribute To was recorded in 2001, the sound of it can be compared to At Dawn from the same year.

Another famous indie musician who made a solo record is Interpol’s Paul Banks. He thought he was so famous that he needed an alter ego. Under the moniker Julian Plenti he recorded eleven songs that might even be appreciated by people who were annoyed by Interpol’s unchanging sound. The songs on ‘Julian Plenti is … Skyscraper’ are very different from each other. It results in a somewhat unbalanced record, that has it’s few moments of beauty.

We’re also listening to the ‘new’ Modest Mouse record today, that is characteristically named No One’s First and You’re Next. Although we haven’t heard these songs before, you can’t really call them new, since they’re some leftovers from their last two records We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank and Good News For People Who Love Bad News. Fortunately it doesn’t sound like a leftover album. In more than a half hour you get 8 pretty good Modest Mouse songs.  Modest Mouse isn’t as great as in their early days, but we don’t think anybody counts on that anymore since Good News For People Who Love Bad News. The late Heath Ledger directed an animation video for the song King Rat