Portland-based artist’s pandemic affected latest missive.
Nick Jaina is a renaissance man who has his finger in many pies from writing award-nominated novels, composing music with the New York City Ballet and soundtracks for documentaries yet 2019 found him living in his car. The album began in 2019 and then was swallowed up by the pandemic resulting in a very self-sufficient and lo-fi experience with Jaina taking the lead on most instruments.
It is a melancholy journey that bursts with lyricism and strained vocals set to occasionally baroque musical motifs which vary from mellow strings on the title track to acerbic slashes of guitar for example on the album opener ‘Impossible’.
Sometimes the lyrics border on the pretentious as is the case on ‘Reverse Conciousness’ but musically it remains interesting throughout. Perhaps the weakest part of the sonic stew is Jaina’s voice which often sounds strained but not in a particularly good way. There are hints of Jerry David Decicca in the delivery and the arrangements of ‘Sending Me Off’ which is no bad thing but too often these songs sound like the private musings of someone tinkering in their studio despite the difficult back story and the obvious artistic breadth of his previous works.
Disappointing.
