1. Maryanne - MP3
2. Power - MP3
3. Bicycle
4. Luck
5. Apple Seed
6. Casamiro
7. Interlude 15
8. Hymn
9. Ponchatoula
10. Helen
11. Interlude 1
12. Interlude 4
13. Springtime
14. Lonesome Blues/ Hudson Harmonic +Epilogue

Coming March 4, 2008 on HUSH Records...
a new album from Nick Jaina called WOOL.

WOOL is an album of ballads and lullabies, all lushly orchestrated with strange instruments and rich voices. The songs are soft and yet scratchy, simple and yet complex. The lyrics are as economical as the words in children's stories, as emotional as journal entries, as deep as the Bible. Such as in the song "Bicycle":

"There is a bicycle
that two crows ride
and they carry the moon across the sky.
That is a lie
the moon is a pie
thrown long ago in a clown fight.
That isn't true
it's a hole in the roof
of our mason jar so we can breathe."

Almost all the songs have simple one-word titles and every song is at first very comprehendible. And yet the deeper you look into any one moment, the more complex everything gets, like an old bar where the photos are caked with soot, and beneath the soot is a memory, and beneath the memory is the kind of textured wallpaper that nobody has the time or money to put on walls anymore.

The album was started in December 2006 on a piano that used to belong to Elliott Smith. Nick was the last person to play on it before it was sold to a museum in Seattle, where at best it is now being pretend-played by animatronic rock-stars, and at worst it is sitting in a back closet getting dusty. After that piano was gone, one song had to be recorded on an old jazz piano in Finland while Nick was on tour there. The other instruments were added in waves... Jason Leonard clanged on glockenspiels and silver bowls in a bright white studio where vintage posters are restored. Violin and percussion were added in a friend's house while the friend was in Mexico. Nick recorded the vocals in his own kitchen, refrigerator unplugged so as to be quiet, food slowly spoiling.

NICK JAINA - THE 7 STATIONS (2006)

1. 7 Stations - lyrics
2. Maybe Cocaine - lyrics - mp3
3. One Hand Washing the Other - lyrics
4. The Red Queen - lyrics
5. No Direction - lyrics
6. The Whim of the Ruling Class - lyrics
7. Barleycorn & Toblerone - lyrics
8. We are all Alone in this World - lyrics
9. I Will Swallow the Sea - lyrics
10. Life Falling on Soldiers - lyrics
11. Seems to Calm the Baby - lyrics - mp3

to be re-issued this spring on HUSH Records

Nick Jaina's new album, The 7 Stations, is like a handy map of the unconscious mind. It uses the range of human emotions to lead you to places you have always dreamed of going but never thought you could afford to go to, and to places you have always had nightmares about getting stuck in and not afford to get out of. Each song takes you to a different city, and each city has been run into the ground by a corrupt mayor, a greedy baseball team, or a drug-addled police force. But deep in every city are streets where you grew up, rivers you swam in on summer days, and deep in every song is a determination to be hopeful, the realization that the struggle to survive creates the meaning in our lives.

The album was recorded in studios and kitchens and basements and community music centers all over Portland. For the most part, the rough honest sounds of the kitchen won out over the safer sounds of the studio, but they're all in there mixed up, and it would be hard to tell now which tracks cost dollars and which tracks cost pennies. The album features some of the most talented musicians in Portland, all playing for the love of song. Members of the bands Point Juncture WA, Sounds Like Fun, Heroes & Villains, Horse Feathers, The Maybe Happening, and The Kitchen Syncopators all make appearances.

The 7 Stations has a diverse instrumentation. Some songs have dark and twisted clarinet lines running throughout. Some have the lush and comforting vibraphone poking through. Others feature beautiful interplay between violins and trumpets. Sometimes a haunting banjo plays with an hopeful glockenspiel. Somehow, though, they all manage to line up and look into the camera for the class picture.