bar italia release new single & video 'worlds greatest emoter', new album 'The Twits' out November 3 via Matador Records.
bar italia have released new single and video “worlds greatest emoter”, a driving and ascending standout from their forthcoming second full length of 2023, ‘The Twits’, out November 3rd.
‘worlds greatest emoter’ follows singles “my little tony” which is currently on the BBC 6 Music playlist and “Jelsy”, which The Times described as “slow-burning eerie bluesy rock with a hint of bossa nova from the celebrated trio”, while The Guardian said, “this mordant cowboy strum becomes hypnotic thanks to the London band's trifecta of vocalists, each sounding nihilistic and freshly released from a dark cupboard".
bar italia will host ‘drawings by bar italia’ on October 27th at the Frieze exhibition space at No.9 Cork Street, London. The public view will be at 6pm-8pm.
The band kick off their UK tour October 31st in Manchester, culminating in sold out shows at Rough Trade East on November 6th and Village Underground on November 7th, followed by European headline and festival shows. They play their their first full North American tour in December, including sold out New York shows at Bowery Ballroom. A full list of dates can be found below.
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 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’), 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”.
LIVE DATES
Tuesday 31st October / Manchester, UK : YES - SOLD OUT
Wednesday 1st November / Bristol, UK : The Fleece
Thursday 2nd November / Brighton, UK : Mutations Festival
Friday 3rd November / Leeds, UK : Brudenell Social Club
Saturday 4th November / Glasgow, UK : Room 2
Sunday 5th November / Nottingham, UK : Rough Trade
Monday 6th November / London, UK : Rough Trade East - SOLD OUT
Tuesday 7th November / London, UK : Village Underground - SOLD OUT
Thursday 9th November / Rennes, FR : Antipode
Saturday 11th November / Paris, FR : Pitchfork Festival
Sunday 12th November / Grenoble, FR : Le Ciel
Monday 13th November / St Gallen, CH: Palace
Wednesday 15th November / Vienna, AT : B72
Thursday 16th November / Schorndorf, DE : Manufaktur
Friday 17th November / Leipzig, DE : TransCentury Update
Saturday 18th November / Hamburg, DE : Molotow Skybar
Sunday 19th November / Berlin, DE : Lido - SOLD OUT
Monday 20th November / Copenhagen, DK : VEGA
Wednesday 22nd November / Frankfurt, DE : Tanzhaus West
Thursday 23rd November / Rotterdam, NL : Rotown
Friday 24th November / Amsterdam, NL : Bitterzoet - SOLD OUT
Saturday 25th November / Antwerp, BE : Trix
Sunday 26th November / Brussels, BE : Botanique
Fri-Dec-01 Washington,DC Songbyrd
Sat-Dec-02 Philadelphia,PA First Unitarian Church
Sun-Dec-03 Brooklyn, NY Elsewhere - SOLD OUT
Mon-Dec-04 New York, NY Bowery Ballroom - SOLD OUT
Tue-Dec-05 Boston,MA Brighton Music Hall
Wed-Dec-06 Montreal,QC Sala Rossa
Fri-Dec-08 Toronto,ON Velvet Underground
Sat-Dec-09 Detroit,MI The Loving Touch
Sun-Dec-10 Chicago,IL Empty Bottle – SOLD OUT
Mon-Dec-11 Chicago, IL Empty Bottle
Tue-Dec-12 St. Paul, MN Turf Club
Wed-Dec-13 Madison, WI High Noon Saloon
Fri-Dec-15 Columbus, OH Ace of Cups
Sat-Dec-16 Cleveland, OH Mahall's
Sun-Dec-17 Pittsburgh, PA Club Cafe
2024
Fri-Mar-15 New York, Warsaw
Wed-Mar-20 Atlanta, GA The Earl
Thu-Mar-21 Durham, NC Motorco Music Hall
Fri-Mar-22 Asheville, NC Eulogy
Mon-Mar-25 Nashville, TN The Blue Room at Third Man Records
Wed-Mar-27 New Orleans, LA Toulouse Theatre
Thu-Mar-28 Houston, TX The Secret Group
Fri-Mar-29 Austin, TX Mohawk
Sat-Mar-30 Dallas, TX Sons of Hermann Hall
Mon-Apr-01 Albuquerque, NM Sister
Mon-Apr-08 Portland, OR Mississippi Studios
Tue-Apr-09 Vancouver, BC Hollywood Theatre
Wed-Apr-10 Seattle, WA Neumos
May 2nd - London, UK - Electric Brixton