There’s a whirlwind energy that sweeps through bar italia’s new album Some Like It Hot. The sound of a band making the most confident strides of their career to date, it’s loud, at times delightfully messy, and dead certain to bring mosh pits to their live shows—which isn’t to say that those were a foreign concept to the band previously. There’s a feeling that Nina Cristante, Jezmi Tarik Fehmi, and Sam Fenton are more in tune with their sense of selves on their fifth effort. After all, this was a band who didn’t give interviews earlier in their career, leading to the cultivation of an ambiguous narrative spun in part by Reddit speculation. “I think that perception is changing based on this conversation we’re having,” explains Fenton. “We didn’t consciously manufacture a sense of mystery, it just came about circumstantially through not feeling comfortable to do interviews. It was all unfamiliar territory.”
bar italia’s earliest alt-rock material was defined by a sense of effortless cool and a rawness that saw them stand out from more conventional peers in the UK scene. And they’re a real triple-threat, too: Each member contributes vocals which criss-cross in both fascinating back-and-forths and powerful collective tangents. Despite that vocal forcefulness, though, another part of that sense of mystery they were initially cloaked in was the result of their live shows sometimes being described as “introverted,” if not criticized for their lack of on-stage interaction. “I think it’s a natural way of starting to do something that involves a lot of people looking at you,” Fenton says. “It’s just being unfamiliar and getting to know your space.”
Having now played hundreds of shows across the world, the band are much more comfortable in the art of live performance. “I was so inexperienced when I started,” adds Cristante, who had never even been on stage before meeting Fenton and Fehmi. “I think it’s good not to overdo it if you don’t know what your comfort zone is. The learning curve was extremely steep for me in a positive way. You have to learn going from having your legs shaking to actually just owning that place, and being connected to everyone else who’s playing.”
There are moments on Some Like It Hot that feature an unrelenting energy, a bit of extra bite that British music has been missing recently underneath a dearth of similar-sounding post-punk bands. bar italia wouldn’t describe themselves as “indie-rock,” but there are undoubtedly points where these songs capture the best of ’00s bands like Bloc Party. “People love throwing out the term ‘indie’ now because of this revival, and it’s starting to gross us out a bit,” Fenton says. “I guess The Cribs are an example of a timeless band who aren’t subject to a sleazy revival.” It’s Jezmi who is the band’s resident expert on that particular UK outfit. “Because of the Northern aspect of them, as well, all of their songs are about how they hate other things, calling out scenesters and fakers. They’re an oppositional force by nature.”
“We didn’t consciously manufacture a sense of mystery, it just came about circumstantially through not feeling comfortable to do interviews.” — Sam Fenton
bar italia have inevitably wound up in conversations about the recent “indie sleaze” trend, a seeming catch-all for current artists tapping into the creative well of aughts indie rock. “I think ‘indie sleaze’ was made by someone who didn’t live through it,” Fehmi says. “It’s one of these Zoomer things where they’ve conflated Lana Del Ray with The Strokes. We’ve all lived through it and remember it in the real world, so we can never associate ourselves with something like that, because we know we aren’t. We don’t sound like the things we’re necessarily referencing. We sound more like us, and I’m proud of us for that.
“Indie, when you think about it, was four bands and everything else was landfill trying to copy it,” he continues after Cristante pleads with him not to provide his thoughts on Leeds band The Pigeon Detectives. “When you talk about a genre, you’re actually talking about the originators. When someone says ‘indie sleaze’ I think of shit, like crap music.”
bar italia are self-aware of their positioning in the music scene, taking on a wider range of rock stylings throughout their career that so far include shoegaze, grunge, and nu-metal. When it came to recording Some Like It Hot in January 2024, it was the first chance for the band to record alongside a more “normal, adjusted life,” according to Fehmi, as opposed to being broke and sometimes sleeping in the studio, which they had done previously. The band enjoy having freedom in their recording process, and the meaning of that changes between records. “For The Twits, freedom meant being in the middle of nowhere in a house by ourselves,” Fehmi says. “This time, freedom meant having a normal routine outside the recording process. It was definitely the sanest approach we’ve had so far.”
“We don’t sound like the things we’re necessarily referencing. We sound more like us, and I’m proud of us for that.” — Jezmi Tarik Fehmi
Part of that routine was cycling back and forth between South and East London to the studio via Tower Bridge. For Fehmi and Cristante, it provided inspiration for a lot of their lyrics. “I’ve just started doing this thing where I look right and left every time and check the skyline of London,” says Cristante. “At night it’s really cool.” Each member of bar italia has a different relationship to London: Fenton was born and raised in the city, Cristante moved there from Rome in her adulthood, and Fehmi moved there from Essex.
London plays its own role on Some Like It Hot. Iconography appears in the title of “Marble Arch,” which also features the lyrics “Rain in London town, it reflects all the feelings of people around.” Even if it’s not always direct, you can feel those London nights permeating through the album—the chatter, the stories of romance and heartbreak, a city full of eccentricities. Those moments of nighttime inspiration spent cycling under the city’s glow give the album a distinct nightlife feeling. “Nightlife is also dreamscapes—that space in between reality and fiction,” Cristante says. “That’s definitely a mood I recognize in these songs. There’s a sense of abstraction that night allows.”
Dreams take up an important part of bar italia’s writing process, which they describe as a blend of reality and fiction, with Fehmi struggling to pin down where his own lines come from. “I can’t remember what happened—or whether that happened, or whether I dreamt what happened. Maybe I’m just a liar.” The track “Cowbella” feels gossipy to the point that you could read out the lyrics like tabloid headlines. “Did she keep a lover between the lines? / Did she have a passion they didn’t know about?” ponders Cristante before Fenton takes the reins: “Did she run or did she stay? / What’s it gonna take for you to say?” What’s most impressive is the song’s engaging character study: The woman is given no name, but is the center of gravity, a person of great intrigue. It’s this level of vivid detailing that makes every song on Some Like It Hot come to life, especially during slower moments such as the absorbing “Plastered.”
“Nightlife is also dreamscapes—that space in between reality and fiction. That’s definitely a mood I recognize in these songs. There’s a sense of abstraction that night allows.” — Nina Cristante
“Cowbella” came out of that aforementioned balance between dream and reality that persists in their songwriting. “It was one of the first songs we wrote when coming back from tour,” says Cristante. “For me, it has the exhaustion and cheekiness of just having met hundreds of people for fleeting moments and imagining entire lives with them, or the lives they have.”
“Sometimes I feel warmer and freer with people I’ve just met,” adds Fenton. For him, Some Like It Hot was a chance to write about his evolving sense of belonging. Describing himself as struggling with feelings of alienation, while also not wanting to miss out on things, it’s something that’s affected his relationship with London, too. “A lot of your own personal development and growth is happening on the road. The need to be connected to [London], while also the need to get away from it—those two things are ever-present and conflicting ideas for me.”
bar italia have done a lot of growing over the last few years, and in some ways they still are. Unlike most bands, they took time to learn more about themselves before feeling comfortable enough to open up. This has led to Some Like It Hot being their most confident record to date, in which their seemingly telepathic connection produces songs of stunning drama, insular soul searching, deep romance, and room-shaking riffs. FL
