The beloved ’fro-ed painter Bob Ross inspired the name of this band, and I had as much fun listening to their new record, Asterisk, as I had watching the show as a kid. No sarcasm here. The Joy of Painting, to put it simply, knows what to do, and does it well. It’s funny that the band describes its sound as garage pop, because that’s precisely how to describe countless phenomenal ‘60s bands that never became household names, but paved the way for punk with a grittier sound that still had the delightful hooks of jangly ‘60s pop. To put it differently, The Joy of Painting can be right at home playing alongside Nashville’s iconic, below-the-radar skuzzy garage acts, what with their 90s-punk guitars, and yet their cheeriness causes them to stick out. It’s like slummy garage with a nice attitude.

Some bands, like Arcade Fire, consciously make anthems out of their songs, and it’s great. Other bands, like The Joy of Painting, just seem like their sound is accidently grandiose and bursting with color and energy. Fast moving and catchy, there’s the cute-pop 1960s sentiment that bands like The Flamin Groovies had and a roughness and attention to guitars like Weezer.

The best are all of them. The best of the best are “Old Love,” “No Bones” and “My Personality.” Lyrics aren’t hard to decipher, which is fortunate, because the tracks tell specific stories, like in the sad bastard tune (which is simultaneously triumphant) “My Personality”: “So loneliness is OK/just as long as it’s in spurts/I don’t need to find love/I’ll just run with whatever works.” Just as Bob Ross could bring life into a landscape with a little shrubbery or whatever, The Joy of Painting have re-illustrated  the Nashville garage sound, and the colors pop.