Two years ago, when Bar Italia began to grow restless inside their own mystique, they did something audacious: they put a courtroom sketch on the cover of “Jelsy.” It was a wink and a confession—a band on the witness stand, insisting under oath that they were, in fact, normal people. Listening to The Twits, their slouching, half-brilliant sophomore album, you could still picture them there: stone-faced, pleading for ordinariness.
For a while, their slack alt-rock thrived on that icy aura. They carried the residue of World Music, Dean Blunt’s label, like frost clinging to a leather jacket. But mystique has a half-life, and eventually it curdled. “I’d rather be known as boring than mysterious right now,” singer-guitarist Jezmi Fehmi admitted last year. It was a line that felt both ironic and liberating—the sound of a band trying to peel the fog off their own faces.
When Bar Italia first arrived, their ghostliness was their identity. Those early songs were ragged and distant, like someone had ripped them from a corrupted iPod and uploaded them to SoundCloud at 3 a.m. They sounded both far away and emotionally unreachable, the kind of band you could only half-see through cigarette smoke. Their first two Matador albums, Tracey Denim and The Twits (both 2023), hovered between bedroom-pop murk and a more ambitious strain of alt-rock. Some Like It Hot pushes decisively toward the latter: clean lines, tidy production, a sturdier sense of self. It’s a brave step forward—and, somehow, their dullest one yet.
Bar Italia’s new normal lands them squarely in rock’s beige middle ground. Fehmi has gotten what he wanted. The mystery’s gone. But so is the thrill.
Titled after the 1959 screwball comedy, Some Like It Hot tries to smooth out the trio’s vaudevillian edges: two weary male singers, Fehmi and Sam Fenton, volleying lines around Nina Cristante’s smoky deadpan. On paper, it’s a classic triangle; on record, it’s a polite negotiation. Their interplay, once volatile and thrillingly awkward, has been domesticated into harmony. You can sense the intent—to mature, to clarify—but what’s lost is the delicious unease that once made them fascinating.
The irony, of course, is that the qualities Bar Italia are running from—haunted, enigmatic, unnerving—were the same ones that made them feel alive. “Bibs” shimmered like a message from a dream. Now, we get “Fundraiser,” an arena-aspirant banger that plays like an AI-generated composite of Oasis and Bar Italia’s Wikipedia summary. The band’s new commitment to fun, to lightness, too often translates to rigidity. The loud-quiet-loud mechanics feel rote, as if someone’s teaching a workshop on how to write a rock song.
There are flashes of the old spark. “Rooster” opens on a knotty chord progression that could’ve belonged to their early demos before being ironed flat by its singalong chorus. “Lioness” starts as a whispered seduction before the fuzz pedals smother it. Fehmi and Fenton are sharp guitarists—just listen to their other band, Double Virgo—but Some Like It Hot rarely lets them duel or breathe. When they do, on “Eyepatch,” something clicks: its jangle recalls early-’80s Factory Records shimmer, casual but magnetic. “I Like My Own Dust” tightens into a suffocating loop of chords and arpeggios, suggesting the tension they used to build entire songs around. It’s the rare moment where their chemistry feels earned, not rehearsed.
Bar Italia used to thrive on that unresolved tension—music that refused to release. Some Like It Hot gives you nothing but release, and it feels unearned because the buildup’s gone. By the time Cristante lets out a primal scream midway through “Omni Shambles,” you want to believe her—but the song doesn’t give you reason to.
There’s a broader mood shift happening here, too. The alumni of the World Music microverse—Mark William Lewis, Elias Rønnenfelt, Fehmi, Fenton, Cristante—are lighter now, less preoccupied with gloom. That’s not a bad thing. Growth rarely is. But in trading their lo-fi clutter for studio sheen, Bar Italia have sacrificed the intimacy that once made their detachment feel human.
On The Twits, Cristante sang like someone pleading for recognition: “You keep saying that I don’t care / If only you could see me now / You would have no doubt.” Two years later, Fehmi sighs on “I Like My Own Dust”: “It’s not that I’m in despair / It’s just that I don’t care.” The line lands with a thud—flat, tired, and maybe too honest.
Bar Italia wanted to be seen for who they are. Some Like It Hot proves they can be. But the trouble with lifting the veil is realizing the mystery might’ve been the magic all along.
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