How much do the members of bar italia really care? Declaring that they don’t is a recurring line on their new album Some Like It Hot, at times a sigh of despair, others a damning accusation. As much as its songs often revolve around being driven at wit’s end by someone, it’s also a conscious shift from the sense of cool detachment that marked the band’s previous releases, a natural result of touring around the world and realizing people’s expectations. “I find myself trying to please them/ To show them I care,” Nina Cristante laments on ‘Plastered’, and bar italia’s way of doing so involves just refining their production but allowing that extra bit of fragility. Taking its name from the classic Billy Wilder film about two musicians who disguise themselves as women to join an all-female band, it’s still a predominantly cheeky, spiky, infectious record, one that finds the London trio at a crossroads – not totally renewed, but getting there.
1. Fundraiser
‘Fundraiser’ opens the record with a strong case for bar italia’s newly streamlined sound: the infectious groove is simple but barely stagnates, focusing on the interplay between the male and female vocals that interrogate the line between fantasy and apathy, obsession and loneliness. The most evocative moment comes when Nina Cristante’s detached cool dissipates to make way for remembering: “So I try to picture you/ From the back.” It’s a compelling portrait of two lovers’ diversions from a single breaking point, where their voices inevitably converge.
2. Marble Arch
“I don’t think I’ve actually met you/ Not even in my dreams,” Cristante sings on the previous song, and this one opens with a devastating one: “I dreamt you hung yourself/ And my little sister too.” Her performance is delicately disarming over a gentler beat; as it builds and becomes more of a duet, the song loses some of its power, distracting from the haunting emotionality of Cristante’s voice.
3. bad reputation
About halfway through ‘bad reputation’, Cristante offers a fitting description of the song’s atmosphere: “This frantic haze is a flawed mania/ That gets us dancing in broken shows.” Accented with the sound of shattered glass, it is both slightly on the nose and specific in its absurdity, foregrounding the fact that not even a hypnotic waltz can cover the toxic stench.
4. Cowbella
Like ‘Fundraiser’, the early single ‘Cowbella’ – which also took shape within the first week of recording – is immediately hooky. It’s also the first song on Some Like It Hot that really amplifies the trio’s dynamics, each member angling for their moment in the spotlight, baiting the hook, so to speak. There’s a strange sensuality to it and its subject matter, which only adds to the air of mystique the band have tried to shake off – except the song’s mysterious figure is not just separate from the band, but its very target of fascination.
5. I Make My Own Dust
Gritty and bewitching, ‘I Make My Own Dust’ pushes the album’s sound in a grungier direction while further leaning into its escapist tendencies. “There’s a part of my soul that can’t wait to be home/ And another part that finds it everywhere I go/ There’s a small and insidious side that wants to just run away,” Cristante admits. If only the spoken word part didn’t feel awkwardly pasted in from another song.
6. Plastered
The languid sway and weary introspection of ‘Plastered’ is good fit for bar italia, inviting connections between songs, like the way “I make up wars I have to attend/ To figure out how to defend myself” calls back to the “lonely war” of the opener. There’s a bit more nuance here between vocal turns, more push-and-pull than vague tension.
7. rooster
‘Rooster’ quickly proved the best of the album’s singles, boasting a discomfiting chord progression, its best guitar solo, surprising twists, and the trio’s most impassioned vocal performances. An actually manic taste of the romance in ‘bad reputation’, possibly captured at a different moment in time. It’s so fully-formed it just makes the rest of the album feel somewhat undercooked.
8. the lady vanishes
As its title suggests, ‘the lady vanishes’ is another ghostly, gothic track on the album, stretching out with weeping, eerie guitars and spacious drums. Sam Fenton’s vocals, in their bristling desperation, totally sell the song during its climax.
9. Lioness
Even if it weren’t for some of its clunky lyrics, ‘Lioness’ fails to bring new ideas to the table, recycling ones from songs like ‘Fundraiser’: “It’s so easy for things to just move on/ So your face escapes me/ My tears subside/ And you seem to have finally gone/ It’s this failure that haunts me still.” But without much of an entrancing hook, the song doesn’t feel so haunted.
10. omni shambles
Another alluring single – proof that Some Like It Hot would’ve had more success as an EP. Jezmi Tarik Fehmi’s frenetic chorus knots itself around Cristante’s ethereal verses, which grasp toward the cosmic: “We run hand by hand to the end of time/ Under the sky that changes only colour/ Each star stays a star/ Each cloud stays a cloud.”
11. Eyepatch
Faster and janglier than most songs on the album, ‘Eyepatch’ makes a lot out of straightforward, memorable riff, adding in flourishes like hand-claps that keep it engaging rather than watering it down. “It feels like having/ The worst time ever,” Cristante sighs, like she’s having a good time feeling that way.
12. Some Like It Hot
Through the newfound polish of bar italia’s sound, a sense of vulnerability comes to replace the “flawed mania” that’s more representative of the band’s earlier releases. There’s awkwardness and imperfection here too, and they’re still part of what makes their dynamic compelling, but it’s when they’re able to reflect on them that you feel like they’re moving forward. The closing title track shines in that regard: for an album largely about struggling to shake off one thing from your mind, the admission that “there’s one thing I regret, that you were on my mind at any point that night” feels both rueful and enlightened. A lot is said on Some Like It Hot – through gritted teeth, in silent whispers, sudden shrieks – and not all of it makes sense. But it’s a testament to a band stepping up, keeping the blood running through its veins.
