Nick Jaina - "The Bluff Of All Time"

The style of this album is bare, underproduced, and highly emotional. The styles range from the tavern balladry of Tom Waits to the smooth "let-me-level-with-ya" easy folk of 70's Paul Simon. Acoustic guitars, creaky piano, violin, trumpet, accordion, mandolin and drums all waltz slowly onto stage, play an important part, and leave when their time is up. It is an album to take a bath in, an album to hold up to the bullets of the world for some protection.

Nick Jaina has painted faces at Mardi Gras in New Orleans, hung posters in Greenwich Village, toured all of Canada, has been rescued on a farm outside Indianapolis, has been stuck in the El Paso Greyhound station, propositioned while hitch hiking the hill country of Texas, and has been broke in San Francisco. He has written many songs and plays them on the piano, guitar, mandolin, harmonica, accordion, organ or what-have-you. He has played drums with the Be Good Tanyas, synthesizers in the Menomena side project Lackthereof, produced the Kitchen Syncopators, played lead guitar in Myshkin's Ruby Warblers, played in an experimental electronic band at the opening of a Dollar Tree, played trumpet with the Maybe Happening, held the hand of the devil and shot God out of the sky. His songs are rich with faith and despair.

1 The Mercy of His Arms
2 Dirty Heart
3 A Working Boy in a Graduation Gown
4 The Rhythm of the Wrecking Ball
5 Conquering Hero Returns
6 I Have Led You On
7 Dead Liver Kids
8 O Death
9 If I Were to Make Things Right With Jesus
10 Bottles on the Tracks
11 The Way Things Are These Days
12 Turn Out Your Pockets