“Led by bespectacled University of California philosophy student-turned-professor Franklin Bruno, the prolific Nothing Painted Blue purveys fine, nervous aggro-pop which earned the band a reputation as logorrheic eggheads (for one thing, the obviously self-aware trio named one of its limited-edition cassettes Logorrhea). But though ØPB — the preferred abbreviation, natch — are certainly brainy sorts, the music they make is decidedly intra-disciplinary, boasting the verbosity and imagistic flair of an English major, the hyperactive drive of a physics prodigy, the formulaic precision of a math wiz and the big-picture skepticism of a Marx-loving epistemologist. (Yep, they also have a song called “Epistemophilia.”)

Singer/guitarist Bruno and drummer Kyle Brodie were high-school classmates who formally began the group in 1989, when Bruno and bassist Michael Neelon were attending Pomona College. Los Angeles was just a freeway drive away, but the band has always stuck to its suburban roots (the so-called Inland Empire), a commitment that eventually bore fruit in the form of other bands (Refrigerator, Diskothi-Q, Mountain Goats) and labels (most notably Shrimper).“ -Jason Cohen