by Huw Baines (@huwbaines)
How do you feel when things are about to go wrong? Let’s say the needle just crept past 90 and the sparks from the front wheels are really starting to grab your attention. Would you just floor it and style out a fiery death?
If so, the new split 7” from The Rizzos and Top Nachos on King Pizza Records would make an excellent soundtrack before the screen goes black. Across four songs they ricochet between ramshackle garage-rock and bug-eyed punk, sending razor-edged melodies hurtling into traffic. It’s a short, sharp, wild ride that feels like it could end in triumph or disaster at any second. We’re stoked to premiere it below, prior to its release on August 4.
The best splits feature bands that can hang together but don’t actually sound like one another, and this is one of them. The Rizzos - a Brooklyn trio comprising guitarist Megan Mancini, drummer Bettina Warshaw and bassist Justin Ferraro - trade in hooky, sun-bleached songs with an edge.
Their first contribution here is "Bless This Mess," a sub-two minute jaunt that twists lyrics about a toxic living environment into a bar brawl topped by a yell-along chorus: “There’s blood inside these walls, the roof’s about to fall,” Mancini sings. “Get out of my house.” As it fades, "90’s Song" rides a walking Ferraro bassline into a chaotic wall of distortion that lands quite literally out of nowhere.
Top Nachos hail from upstate in New Paltz and hit the ground running with the appropriately named "Fast". All in all Eli Frank and Kenny Hauptman spend less than four minutes doing their thing here, but they do leave a mark. "Fast" is a little like Plow United when they decide to grind through the gears, while "Getchu" wraps a (perhaps misguided) tale of devotion in the split’s most outwardly pop clothes. Its stacked vocals are wistful, dewy-eyed and great fun. Then it’s all woah-ohs on the way to oblivion.