September 17–24, 1998

critic pick|rock/pop

Nothing Painted Blue

Ask Franklin Bruno, lead singer of Nothing Painted Blue, if he's the smartest guy in indie rock and he'll just laugh it off. He's never been one to buy into his own smart-guy reputation. His songs "run toward semi-traditional academic disciplines," he says. He's halfway through UCLA's philosophy Ph.D. program but he attributes his intellectual approach to music to simply being well-read.

Indie rock, he says, is full of smart people: Dave Grubbs, Steve Malkmus, Jenny Toomey. But Bruno's the only one whose liner notes include footnotes like "We recognize and apologize for the lack of subject/pronoun agreement in this line."

"It's kind of a joke on our own image," he says, but adds, "At the same time, I kind of don't want anyone to think I don't know how the grammar works."

Songs like "Collage Elements," sung from the perspective of an obsessed collage artist, showcase his talent for writing in oddball personas. "And I've been banned from the grocery store/ I was brandishing my blade from the shelves/ slicing labels from innocent cans/ now they can't even advertise themselves to themselves."

Bruno (above, left) has also got a keen eye and sharp tongue for the pits and pratfalls of society. In "Modern Again," a fast-paced rock gem, the sarcasm is smart and smarting: "There's a junkie shilling for a sneaker firm/ and a strange suspicion that you can't confirm/ that the pregnancy you didn't take to term/ could have been the new Messiah."

You'd think a group with such a calculating brain at its center would be less stimulating for the ears, but NPB's got plenty of catchy hooks and lines. Says Bruno: "Sociologically, we're an indie rock band, but… Maybe [we're] a power-pop band—with some odd parts."

There's more power and pop on the new record, The Monte Carlo Method, than previous NPB albums, due largely to the addition of a second guitarist, Michael Neelon. The album's title (which Bruno explains is a calculus term—something about randomly dropping nails on a wooden floor to approximate pi), is more relevant to the nature of Nothing Painted Blue than this specific album. "If we have a method, it's sort of like that. We're kind of hapless with respect to our career."—Patrick Rapa

Nothing Painted Blue, with Revelogic and Chris Laughlin, Sat., Sept. 19, Pontiac Grille, 304 South St., 925-4053.