"Considering their past, this was a daring wager. When Bar Italia first came out, spectrality centered not only their vibe, but their sound: ragtag, bedroomy, and brooding, like recovered files from an excavated iPod. There was perverse pleasure in following this scruffy, semi-anonymous band, whose music was intrinsically about distance-sounding far away, and feeling far away, too. In 2023, a fresh record deal yielded Tracey Denim and The Twits, two albums trapped between bedroom-pop origins and alt-rock aspirations."
"Two years later, Some Like It Hot stakes a bolder claim than both: clean-cut, well-mixed power-chord music. The problem, and what makes this evolution so underwhelming, is that this new sound is the absolute middle ground of rock in 2025. Fehmi has gotten his wish: No longer are Bar Italia mysterious, but something much worse-monotonous. Conflictingly, this new album does angle toward an evolution, even if the one it achieves is sterile."
Bar Italia initially cultivated a spectral, distance-oriented sound: ragtag, bedroomy, brooding, and semi-anonymous. Early releases traded on icy mystique tied to Dean Blunt’s World Music label. The band left that label for Matador in 2023 and released Tracey Denim and The Twits, records that straddled bedroom-pop origins and alt-rock ambitions. Some Like It Hot shifts toward clean-cut, well-mixed power-chord rock. The new production removes the previous mystique but settles into the absolute middle ground of 2025 rock, producing a sterile, monotonous result. Singer-guitarist Jezmi Fehmi expressed a preference to be seen as boring rather than mysterious.
Read at Pitchfork
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