Five albums in and hundreds of shows later, the London trio remain stubbornly hard to define. bar italia chat Some Like It Hot, the year of touring that shaped it, and why taking PR too seriously will make you depressed.

“Do your research,” implores Sam Fenton with a wry laugh. Sat on either side of him are Nina Cristante and Jezmi Fehmi – it’s bar italia, dialling into our Zoom call from Tokyo. Sam’s right. I probably should have done a bit more research. But as the interview progresses and I spend minutes at a time watching the band piss about with various zany filters, I don’t reckon any amount of trawling the internet would have been ample prep. The trio are boisterous. They’d have been great larking about with Paula Yates on The Big Breakfast. “That’s so bitchy,” offers Nina in response to one of my first questions – whether their other projects, namely Sam and Jezmi’s Double Virgo, means bar italia isn’t filling their cup. “bar italia’s cup is overflowing,” concludes Sam. To be fair, it probably is. To be fair, I’m terrified. 

I’m sitting down with the band to talk about their fifth studio album, Some Like It Hot. If their previous records earned them the label of slacker rock (“I particularly hate the slacker thing,” quips Sam), their new offering is one honed by a life on the road. “We were coming back from a year of touring,” says Nina. “We had been basically on stage for, like, 170 shows.” You might even call Some Like It Hot meta – the title borrows from the 1959 film about performers hiding behind masks. ‘Just show me the face that you’ve been tryna hide,’ sings Sam on “bad reputation”, which blends folk with something more disorienting – all swirling atmosphere and off-kilter production, it’s a bit like you’re tripping at a fairground.

“Would it be fair to say this is an album about performance?” I ask. “I redid parts over and over again in a Stanley Kubrick kind of way,” says Jezmi. “60 takes – to make it feel really uncanny every time I performed it.” Their background has been switched out for a close-up of some grass. Another click on the trackpad and Jezmi’s wearing a beret. Nina appears to be crying with laughter. “[Jezmi wanted to] achieve a kind of transcendence,” adds Sam. 

It’s hard to get a straight answer out of bar italia. They’ve got the kind of art school credentials (Nina studied at Goldsmiths, which she says is “still part of how [she thinks] about contemporary aesthetics”) that explain their oblique interview style, if not the music itself. “The whole of bar italia was a project to make true all of the things that Mark Fisher said,” says Jezmi when I point out that people have them down as an intellectual band. Fisher is the late cultural theorist best known for Capitalist Realism. It’s not the obvious influence for an indie rock band, but this is bar italia – and they’re half taking the piss. Whether it’s Pitchfork likening them to “vaudeville caricatures” or Reddit users dissecting whether bar italia are “sneering” or just refreshingly uncensored, neither listener nor interviewer quite knows where they stand. “That’s Scorpio research,” adds Nina when I mention the forum – she’d correctly guessed my star sign within the first minute of our call. “We don’t make music with a lot of preset ideas before,” Jezmi explains. “A lot of the thought process happens after, when we get asked questions about it.” 

bar italia was born from a chance meeting in Peckham back in 2019. The three of them happened to be living in the same building, which became an impromptu rehearsal space once the pandemic hit. What started as Nina, Sam, and Jezmi has expanded to a five-piece live setup. “It’s changed massively, but it’s also about experience and just, like, practicing,” explains Nina. “When we come off tour, I think all of us have some areas we wanna get better at.” She’s the guiding force of the interview – or at least she tries to be. “I’m gonna try and get a bit worse,” says Jezmi, derailing things once again. “I think I’m averaging one string break a set at the minute, and I kind of need to be averaging three.” “You are too good,” adds Sam. “It’s just cringe.” He’s donned some oversized sunglasses. Real, not digital.

“Is there a power struggle between the three of you?” I ask at one point. “Your eyebrows are saying there is a power struggle,” Sam replies. It’s just a few breaths after Jezmi suggested they interview me, so that one’s water off a duck’s back. “I think a trio is always an interesting shape,” Nina muses. “It’s really hard for someone not to feel left out,” adds Jezmi. Who’s that, then? “I’m a perpetual loner. Nina’s a perpetual loner. We all probably think we’re the person who feels left out, which is why we’re all terrible human beings.” I’m not going to call it a vulnerable moment – it’s never quite clear what level of irony bar italia are operating at – but there’s something there. 

Listening to Some Like It Hot, it’s clearly a dynamic that works. Where their earlier work was, as Nina puts it, “hook-led” and “irreverent”, often at the expense of feeling finished, the kinks are ironed out on the new record. “Fundraiser”, the album’s first track, jangles its way to an earned chorus in a way their earlier work deliberately avoided. Elsewhere, on “Rooster”, Nina ditches the subdued approach for something confident and insistent. ‘When you say jump I jump,’ she demands. They’ve got better, just like Nina said – even if it risks alienating fans who loved the slacker quality they’ve now outgrown.

Sam would say I’m fishing for compliments (and he actually does say that) but I have to state it for the record: it’s the nature of the job to ask strange, cerebral questions. “If you take the PR stuff too seriously, it’s gonna really depress you,” explains Jezmi. “Sometimes you do get a bit depressed in interviews and you’re like, why are you asking me a question about something I don’t understand? Why does anyone want to read this? Ultimately it’s imposter syndrome.” As the interview winds down, Sam offers a summary: “Our album’s about performance, your interview’s about interviewing.” “Postmodernism is back,” he adds as Jezmi switches to a pirate hat and eyepatch.

The last time I saw bar italia, I was nearly following them on stage at Tufnell Park’s The Dome. I’d arrived late and wasn’t sure which door led to the punters. It makes for a neat callback when they suggest I come on stage at their Roundhouse show in March. “You could interview us,” says Sam. “We could take a break and have a two minute sit down.” “Should we just get all the press for the rest of the year outta the way at the gig?” adds Jezmi. Maybe that’ll actually happen. Maybe I’ll get an email nearer the time. It’ll just slot into the thread, right after the one from their PR apologising for the chaos of this call. 

Listen to Some Like It Hot…

Photography by Grace Pickering
Styling by Doug Broad
Words by Amber Rawlings
Hair by Ash Hill at W Artists 
Make-up by Seunghee Yoo at W Artists 
Fashion Assistant Molly Swatman
Special Thanks to The Black Eel