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When Bar Italia first emerged, they were very much a work in progress. Formed just before COVID shut down the world, the London trio spent lockdown releasing prolifically, putting out two nascent albums and an EP through Dean Blunt’s hype-stirring World Music label, before signing to Matador for a pair of 2023 LPs – ‘Tracey Denim’ and ‘The Twits’. All the while, they were still finding their feet: as a live band without a stage to play on for their first two years; as an increasingly buzzy outfit who’d never banked on having to navigate the music press (for a long time, they simply didn’t do interviews), and as a group of mates who were quite literally figuring it all out as they went along.
People jumped to call their lack of online presence and face-obscuring visuals ‘mysterious’ or ‘elusive’, but it would be more accurate to say they just didn’t know any better. “We didn’t know how it worked being a band and being a slightly public entity. We didn’t realise the expectations or the etiquette within that,” says vocalist and guitarist Sam Fenton. “So, within the answer of ‘we never intended to be mysterious’ was that we also never expected people to be so curious about us being that way.”
However, two years on, and following a wild ride that plucked the group – completed by Nina Cristante (vocals) and Jezmi Tarik Fehmi (vocals, guitar) – firmly out of the shadows and sent them around the globe, Bar Italia are ready for their close-up. This month’s third album, ‘Some Like It Hot’, is a revelation; a muscular, spirited collection of tracks that brim with confidence and the awareness of a world that now knows their name.
The opposite of shadowy and coy, it steps up and demands deserved attention: heading into the final months of 2025, it’s a late contender for one of the year’s best. “On the new album, you can feel like we’ve been subjected to loads of gigging and touring the world,” muses Cristante. “It feels like you know that people are listening.”
There’s a sense of playful bravado to ‘Some Like It Hot’ that feels absent from a lot of guitar music right now. It’s not swagger in the Oasis sense of the word, but something altogether more sexy. The 1959 Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon three-hander about a trio of touring musicians from which it takes its name might suggest easy parallels, but the real thread comes in its shared spirit.
“[The title] seemed a bit cheeky and a bit cocky, and that was what was attractive,” says Cristante. Musically, the three move from the spiky Cure-isms of ‘Fundraiser’ through languid continental shimmies on ‘Marble Arch’, to the doomed waltz of ‘Bad Reputation’ and the full-on indie banger of ‘Cowbella’ – and that’s just in the first four tracks. As a collection, it bursts with ideas as only a band hitting a real purple patch can manage.
The key lies in their specific alchemy as a trio. “You have to find where the triangle is moving; you can’t bring your own sense of where something has to go,” says Fenton of their writing process. “And as soon as you lean into that and allow it to happen, the song takes a transcendent shape, much more than it would have been on your own, trying to follow one path.”
Sharing vocal duties, there’s a push and pull to the way the three interact that highlights their differences as much as the sensibilities they share. There’s an energy built on productive conflict – be it in the way their voices play off each other or in the differing viewpoints of a track like ‘Fundraiser’. “When I don’t have your love, it’s a lonely war,” laments Fenton before Cristante comes in: “I don’t think I’ve actually met you…”
“There’s something about our match-up that just really appeals to me – it just feels meant to be” – Sam Fenton
“We’re not conflict-averse as a band,” Fehmi laughs. “But we don’t write the lyrics together,” Cristante points out, “and we often don’t ask what the others are talking about. So I don’t know to this day what Sam or Jezmi are writing about in ‘Fundraiser’ and they don’t know who or what I’m writing about.” Are they not curious?! “Honestly, I tried, but they just don’t tell me…” she sighs. “So then it’s like, well, no one is asking me anything, so fine, I won’t ask them…” “We’re nothing if not classic men,” Fehmi deadpans.
They might not be sharing the exact particulars of their lyrical world, but there’s a mutual affinity for heightened drama that runs throughout. These are tracks that go all-in, creating tiny cinematic vignettes with every oblique story. “A river dies in a flood of ocean / I had a similar time in your devotion,” begins ‘I Make My Own Dust’; “I cried and I ran til the end of the earth / It’s the least that I could do / To get away from you,” Fehmi intones over the slow, narcotic guitars of ‘The Lady Vanishes’. “I find playing a character can be a way of being almost more truthful than I would dare to be if I was speaking directly from my point of view,” Fenton says. “Sometimes you need to process that drama to get in touch with yourself on a deeper level.”
Cristante is keen for their boy-girl-boy dynamic not to affect the album’s interpretation, however. “I was doing a mental count, and eight or nine songs for me are not about romantic relationships. They’re about anecdotes or reflections,” she notes. “I resist that a little bit because you hear a female voice with guys and you think straight away of a relationship. Obviously, there’s loads of love as well, and it’s so important, but it’s interesting with lyrics and vocal lines how something can become relatable and romantic just by the environment they create, even if the words are very vague.”
There is a romance to Bar Italia, but perhaps it’s not in anything so simple as a classic love story. Instead, it’s in the feeling of the trio as a proper band’s band: three people testing each other, challenging them to be better, and thus creating something bigger and more alchemical than the sum of their separate parts. Their early mystery may have been somewhat accidental, but they still very much subscribe to the notion of leaving some things to the imagination.
Bar Italia credit Rankin
“People generally just do too much these days,” Fehmi says. “You see someone with 200 followers doing an Ask Me Anything, or someone on a support tour who’ll then make their own tour flyer as if they’re not the support. Like, fuck off! Know your place! I’m not being a dick, but it’s just a bit creepy that everyone feels the need to pretend.”
“We’re not judging that culture, we’re judging the expectation that everyone should be like that,” Fenton notes. “We’ve now done some social media stuff that just felt completely inappropriate to who we are as people, in my opinion. We don’t need to do a thing, sitting around a table pretending we’re on a first date, answering communal questions. I don’t feel represented truthfully by that stuff; it shuts me down as a human being.” “It’s like when you put a little coat on a dog or something,” Cristante laughs, “and the dog gets really shy…”
Don’t go expecting Bar Italia to start any new TikTok trends, then. But if you’re after a band to believe in, who’ve surpassed the initial hype to make something even better than their early potential could have suggested, then look no further.
“There was a fateful feeling for me when we started working together. We’d already felt like that as friends, but working together took it to a different level,” Fenton smiles before referencing that familiar push and pull. “Even when we weren’t getting on, I almost felt like I was watching a film; I was enjoying the bits when we weren’t getting on because there was character to it. There’s something about our match-up that just really appeals to me, and I think we all feel that. There’s something that just feels meant to be.”
Bar Italia’s ‘Some Like It Hot’ is out on October 17 via Matador Records
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English (US) ·