BAR ITALIA release new single and video 'Jelsy', announce 'drawings by bar italia' exhibition at London Frieze gallery
BAR ITALIA RELEASE NEW SINGLE AND VIDEO
NEW ALBUM ‘THE TWITS’ OUT NOVEMBER 3
BAND TO HOST ‘DRAWINGS BY BAR ITALIA’ EXHIBITION
OCTOBER 27 @ FRIEZE GALLERY, LONDON
UK, EUROPEAN AND US TOUR DATES INCLUDING SOLD OUT VILLAGE UNDERGROUND SHOW ON NOVEMBER 7
ELECTRIC BRIXTON LONDON HEADLINE SHOW - MAY 2
bar italia have released new single and video “Jelsy”, taken from their forthcoming second full length of 2023, ‘The Twits’, out November 3rd. Led by the group’s three-way vocal dynamic, “Jelsy” plays out like a conversation between friends over over wistful, buzzing country blues, the alternating voices at points comforting, wry and hopelessly yearning. Watch the video HERE.
Additionally, bar italia have announced a group show of drawings to take place October 27th at the Frieze exhibition space at No.9 Cork Street, with the public view at 6pm-8pm. ‘drawings by bar italia’ will display sketches by the band members made around the writing of the new album and informed by its world.
Later today, the band will perform live in session on BBC 6 Music’s New Music Fix Daily show which airs between 7-9pm BST.
“Jelsy” follows first single “my little tony” which announced ‘The Twits’ in September. The Guardian said, “A killer opening line – “Your pretentious ways make me die a little” – plus edge-of-chaos sound, like Automatic-era Jesus and Mary Chain playing in a lock-up garage. Splendid.” The track has gone on to receive spins on BBC 6 Music’s New Music Fix, by John Kennedy on Radio X and Matt Wilkinson on Apple Music, as well as appearing on Spotify UK’s New Music Friday.
bar italia play UK and European tour dates through October-November, including a sold-out London headline at Village Underground on November 7th. They return to the US in December for their first full North American tour, and will perform sold out New York shows at Bowery Ballroom and Elsewhere. The band have announced further North American dates for spring 2024 including a new show at New York’s Warsaw venue on March 15th, and a London headline show at Electric Brixton on May 2nd. A full live itinerary can be found below.
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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, the cathartic four-on-the-floor of “world’s greatest emoter” 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’), NME ("a lasting impression that’s all of their own making"), The Quietus (“endlessly evocative”) and Pigeons And Planes (“quickly establishing themselves as one of the most enticing upcoming bands”). 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”.
TRACKLIST
2. Real house wibes (desperate house vibes)
3. twist
4. worlds greatest emoter
5. calm down with me
6. Shoo
7. que suprise
8. Hi fiver
9. Brush w Faith
10. glory hunter
11. sounds like you had to be there
12. Jelsy
13. bibs
LIVE DATES
Tuesday 31st October / Manchester, UK : YES
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
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
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
LINKS
‘The Twits’ album pre-order - https://baritalia.ffm.to/thetwits
“my little tony’ - https://baritalia.ffm.to/mylittletony
“Jelsy” - https://baritalia.ffm.to/jelsy
