David Pizza, aka David Castillo, aka the heart and soul behind Denver’s Pizza Time, is a true garage-punk maverick simply because he disobeys every rule that tries to stranglehold the genre. Singing in Spanish and English, Castillo utilizes anything he wants—including drum machines and synthesizers—to create classic pop songs carefully disguised under the guise of reckless punk abandon. Even his sudden decision to completely rerecord his new album U Wanna Pizza Me? barely moments before its release is indicative of his autoschediastic, whatever-flows attitude.
The eight songs on the tape clock in at a running time just under 15 minutes, and are mostly all self-recorded by Castillo with some help from CJ Pizza, aka CJ Macleod from Sauna, another of Denver’s greats. The first four songs are in Spanish, and the second half in English, but whatever language you speak, or don’t speak, you’ll find yourself bopping and smiling along to Castillo’s unflappable Jonathan Richman-esque jeu d’esprit, capturing the pure essence of music’s universal language.
“(I’m Gonna Try To) Romance U” is an adorable pop-punker so catchy, in fact, one can easily imagine Joey Ramone singing it down the halls of Vince Lombardi High School or to Riff Randell in her bedroom with Johnny lurking in the corner for some reason. “Sleep Less” is a subtly existential song about doing, well, just what the title suggests in order to accomplish more in the day. It not only maps out the philosophy of this album, but Pizza Time’s entire prolific work ethic as well. Unless the original versions are ever released, it’s impossible to tell how much an improvement rerecording the album resulted in, but it’s hard to imagine it can get much better than this.
In A Word: Insouciant
