bar italia have released new single and video ‘Jelsy’, taken from their forthcoming second full length of 2023, ‘The Twits’, out November 3rd. Led by the group’s three-way vocal dynamic, ‘Jelsy’ plays out like a conversation between friends over wistful, buzzing country blues, the alternating voices at points comforting, wry and hopelessly yearning. Watch the video below…
Additionally, bar italia have announced a group show of drawings to take place October 27th at the Frieze exhibition space at No.9 Cork Street, with the public view at 6pm-8pm. ‘drawings by bar italia’ will display sketches by the band members made around the writing of the new album and informed by its world.
‘Jelsy’ follows first single ‘my little tony’ which announced ‘The Twits’ in September. The Guardian said, “A killer opening line – “Your pretentious ways make me die a little” – plus edge-of-chaos sound, like Automatic-era Jesus and Mary Chain playing in a lock-up garage. Splendid.” The track has gone on to receive spins on BBC 6 Music’s New Music Fix, by John Kennedy on Radio X and Matt Wilkinson on Apple Music, as well as appearing on Spotify UK’s New Music Friday.
bar italia are the London based three-piece of Nina Cristante, Jezmi Tarik Fehmi and Sam Fenton.
‘The Twits’ was recorded by the trio over eight weeks from February 2023 in a makeshift home studio in Mallorca, and was mixed by Marta Salogni. It finds bar italia’s economical yet evocative songcraft taking raucous, mystic, unkempt, occasionally sinister, and wholly committed turns. Songs like “my little tony”, with its in-the-red riff and excitable hooks, the cathartic four-on-the-floor of ‘world’s greatest emoter’ and the festival tent psychedelia of “Hi-fiver” need little in the way of exposition – these are exhilarating rock songs, if wayward and strange.
Other moments see the band’s increasingly signature, three-act mini-dramas moving into previously uncharted territory. Cristante, Fehmi and Fenton can each manifest a different melody, mood, and cadence – at times overlapping and linear, at others unexpectedly divergent – often within the space of thirty seconds, a tag team rooted in shared language and kinship.
While Tracey Denim was notable for its compact 2-3 minute compositions, horizontal and open-ended tracks like “Shoo” ebb and flow, moving from reptilian dive-bar soloing to a palpitating two-note piano coda. ‘glory-hunter’ takes playful twists and turns before ending up somewhere entirely different from where it started. “Real house wibes (desperate house vibes)” and “que surprise” imply sleepless, noirish misadventure, while at the other end of the light spectrum, “sounds like you had to be there” features some of the band’s most sweetly optimistic musical gestures yet. Closer “bibs” is a rare instance where all three can be heard in unison, as a procession of ghostly chords and lacerating feedback bookends the group’s most adventurous and rich set to date.
Released in May, bar italia’s Matador debut ‘Tracey Denim’ followed a string of word-of-mouth releases on Dean Blunt’s World Music label and received widespread
attention from publications including The Guardian (“one of the albums of 2023 so far”), The Times (“excellent debut album”), The Observer (‘Artist To Watch’), NME (“a lasting impression that’s all of their own making”), The Quietus (“endlessly evocative”) and Pigeons And Planes (“quickly establishing themselves as one of the most enticing upcoming bands”). Single “Nurse!” was playlisted on BBC 6 Music and received spins from BBC Radio 1, Absolute Radio and NTS. The release was accompanied by a UK tour, culminating in a sold-out headline show at the ICA in London, which The Spectator described as “transfixing… They just make their beautiful, off-kilter music, and let you unfold your own stories on top”.
In June, bar italia made their US live debut, with sold-out residencies encompassing five New York and four Los Angeles shows. Of one of the New York dates, Brooklyn Vegan noted, “live it plays out naturally, terrifically, on songs like ‘Punkt’, ‘changer’, and ‘Nurse!’ (…) that mixed early-’80s post-punk with ’90s indie rock and just a whiff of trip-hop”
TRACKLIST
- my little tony
- Real house wibes (desperate house vibes)
- twist
- worlds greatest emoter
- calm down with me
- Shoo
- que suprise
- Hi fiver
- Brush w Faith
- glory hunter
- sounds like you had to be there
- Jelsy
- bibs
bar italia
