Bar Italia live review: A desperately cool band alienate a bored crowd
Without a doubt, Bar Italia’s first full-length release on Matador Records, Tracey Denim, has been my album of the year – certainly my most listened to as my Spotify Wrapped 2023 will likely attest come the year’s close. It provided a welcome take on guitar music that seemed to finally represent a departure from the recent post-punk era that had dragged on for far too long, replaced with a kind of romantic sincerity that seems to have been missing from the contemporary scene for several years.
So I was excited to see the London band’s offerings on the live stage, even if I was slightly sceptical that they would fall victim, as so many modern guitar bands often do, to sounding only half as good as they do on record. Their Matador follow-up, the highly anticipated and equally quality The Twits, released late last week, had only increased my excitement.
However, upon arriving at Village Underground, I immediately felt that the stage and the room were too big for Bar Italia. Not to say it was beyond them, but a smaller and more intimate venue would have been better suited to their sound. But as one of the most talked about bands of 2023, there was no surprise to see the venue sold out and packed so tightly that you had to queue for a cigarette.
The atmosphere in the room was peculiar, although it was rather typical of the kind of audiences London seems to put together effortlessly – baggy, lazy trousers, carefully assembled messy haircuts, chins to stroke, arms to fold and eyes to divert sideways on the sly; in other words, it was just another general fashion show that the capital tends to cough up. The band themselves, seemingly, were no different, with Jezmi Fehmi strutting out to gather his green Les Paul with an affectless confidence, followed by his vocal accomplices Nina Cristante and Sam Fenton, and then the rhythm section who aren’t currently afforded the opportunity to make their way into press shots.
There’s an undeniable sense of Sonic Youth about the guitar work of Fenton and Fehmi, and it’s undoubtedly the most substantial part of the live show, complex and intricate and, at times, with equal moments of chaos and room to breathe. However, the same cannot be said for the vocal performances, particularly of Fenton and Cristante (Fehmi held his own and even excelled at points). Sure, Bar Italia possess that kind of laissez-faire vocal approach that makes their music so appealing, but there’s something off-putting about hearing flat or slightly out-of-key singers on stage, especially a big one.
At points, Fenton bordered on being cringingly bad despite his several years as a musician and songwriter and doubtless talent as a guitarist. It didn’t help that the mix was awful – vocals too high, bass too low, especially for a band that thrives on instrumental relationships. The overall performance was not bad per se, but there just seemed to be something off about the whole ordeal, mainly because this was meant to be the most exciting new band that London had delivered in some time.
The issue was primarily one of attitude. Bar Italia (though they are reticent to admit it according to recent interviews) have a mysterious charm about them. Still, that very mystery, that charm, that undoubted sense of cool that drips from their fresh haircuts and their accidentally-fallen-out-of-bed-into-a-blazer-a-tie attitude causes something of a rift between the band and their audience in a live setting.
There’s no talking between songs, which is fine – audiences are there to see music, not stand-up comedy – but there’s no sense of gratitude towards a fanbase without whom the band would not be signed to Matador, would not be touring the world and would likely have not gotten out of the practice room.
It’s as though this is Bar Italia’s show and venue. If you manage to get in, then you should be fucking grateful. This, rather than the trio (plus two) offering any expression of humility that perhaps could be expected of a band on the up. It’s not like the music is even dark or moody enough to warrant a morose attitude; all well and good appearing sullen or forlorn, but when moments later you’re singing about your relationship going tits up, you’re going to look a touch eye-rollingly ridiculous.
Quite a lot of the time, the crowd just seemed outright bored, bar a few moments like Tracey Denim’s ‘Punkt’ and The Twits singles ‘My Little Tony’ and ‘World Greatest Emoter’, as though they were an exhibition and not a concert. The most excitement anyone in the audience felt or expressed was from an eager watcher asking for ‘My Little Tony’ to be played before expressing his love for the band, marking the only time Cristante actually addressed the room: “It will seem like we’ve played it for you.” And then they did…
And even as the man spoke, there was a growing air of annoyance in the crowd as though he were killing the ultra-cool vibe of the room. Clearly, the sincerity that Bar Italia seem to preach in some of their tracks is not welcome at their shows, where the audience becomes their macrocosm.
Bar Italia are excellent musicians, there’s no denying that, but their lack of humility and gratitude goes a long way to alienating the audience that got them into Village Underground in the first place. It was a typical evening in London; everyone wanted to be seen, but no one wanted to stand out; there was a band on stage; they were playing their guitars and looked cool, but they didn’t want to talk because it might diminish their whole facade. The sad thing is that there might have been a sense of community gathering for one of the most exciting guitar acts in recent memory that night in Shoreditch, but Bar Italia’s insistence on aloof superiority essentially made their show at Village Underground something of a disappointment.
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