Franklin Bruno made his initial appearance in 1987 as the singer and guitarist of the highly productive Los Angeles indie rock trio Nothing Painted Blue, earning broad praise for lyrics marked by ceaseless wit and elaborate wordiness. While studying at Pomona College he helped establish the band, yet graduate work in philosophy at Claremont College and a later UCLA teaching position severely limited the group’s recording and touring schedule. Their debut album, A Baby, a Blanket, a Packet of Seeds, nevertheless appeared on the band’s own Jupa imprint in 1990, followed the next year by Bruno’s first solo cassette, Suggestion Box, issued on Shrimper. Additional solo projects such as the Baby Huey album Hermetic Geometry and the Walt seven-inch single “The Irony Engine” came before his earliest widely distributed release, A Bedroom Community, which Simple Machines put out in 1995. Alongside these endeavors and his academic commitments, Bruno wrote music criticism for CMJ Music Monthly and Puncture; especially memorable was the scathing comic takedown he penned for Matador Records of Jeff Gomez’s poorly regarded indie-rock novel Our Noise. The solo album Kiss Without Makeup surfaced on Absolutely Kosher in spring 2000, with A Cat May Look at a Queen following in fall 2002.
