{"id":1776261,"date":"2026-02-17T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1776261"},"modified":"2026-02-17T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T21:00:00","slug":"wonderland-38","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1776261","title":{"rendered":"Wonderland"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\t\tWonderland<\/span>
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\n\t\t\tBAR ITALIA\u2019S CUP IS OVERFLOWING<\/span>
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Five albums in and hundreds of shows later, the London trio remain stubbornly hard to define. bar italia chat Some Like It Hot<\/em>, the year of touring that shaped it, and why taking PR too seriously will make you depressed.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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\u201cDo your research,\u201d implores Sam Fenton with a wry laugh. Sat on either side of him are Nina Cristante and Jezmi Fehmi \u2013 it\u2019s bar italia, dialling into our Zoom call from Tokyo. Sam\u2019s 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\u2019t reckon any amount of trawling the internet would have been ample prep. The trio are boisterous. They\u2019d have been great larking about with Paula Yates on The Big Breakfast<\/em>. \u201cThat\u2019s so bitchy,\u201d offers Nina in response to one of my first questions \u2013 whether their other projects, namely Sam and Jezmi\u2019s Double Virgo, means bar italia isn\u2019t filling their cup. \u201cbar italia\u2019s cup is overflowing,\u201d concludes Sam. To be fair, it probably is. To be fair, I\u2019m terrified.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sitting down with the band to talk about their fifth studio album, Some Like It Hot<\/em>. If their previous records earned them the label of slacker rock (\u201cI particularly hate the slacker thing,\u201d quips Sam), their new offering is one honed by a life on the road. \u201cWe were coming back from a year of touring,\u201d says Nina. \u201cWe had been basically on stage for, like, 170 shows.\u201d You might even call Some Like It Hot <\/em>meta \u2013 the title borrows from the 1959 film about performers hiding behind masks. \u2018Just show me the face that you\u2019ve been tryna hide<\/em>,\u2019 sings Sam on \u201cbad reputation\u201d, which blends folk with something more disorienting \u2013 all swirling atmosphere and off-kilter production, it\u2019s a bit like you\u2019re tripping at a fairground.<\/p>\n

\u201cWould it be fair to say this is an album about performance?\u201d I ask. \u201cI redid parts over and over again in a Stanley Kubrick kind of way,\u201d says Jezmi. \u201c60 takes \u2013 to make it feel really uncanny every time I performed it.\u201d Their background has been switched out for a close-up of some grass. Another click on the trackpad and Jezmi\u2019s wearing a beret. Nina appears to be crying with laughter. \u201c[Jezmi wanted to] achieve a kind of transcendence,\u201d adds Sam.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s hard to get a straight answer out of bar italia. They\u2019ve got the kind of art school credentials (Nina studied at Goldsmiths, which she says is \u201cstill part of how [she thinks] about contemporary aesthetics\u201d) that explain their oblique interview style, if not the music itself. \u201cThe whole of bar italia was a project to make true all of the things that Mark Fisher said,\u201d 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<\/em>. It\u2019s not the obvious influence for an indie rock band, but this is bar italia \u2013 and they\u2019re half taking the piss. Whether it\u2019s Pitchfork<\/em> likening them to \u201cvaudeville caricatures\u201d or Reddit users dissecting whether bar italia are \u201csneering\u201d or just refreshingly uncensored, neither listener nor interviewer quite knows where they stand. \u201cThat\u2019s Scorpio research,\u201d adds Nina when I mention the forum \u2013 she\u2019d correctly guessed my star sign within the first minute of our call. \u201cWe don\u2019t make music with a lot of preset ideas before,\u201d Jezmi explains. \u201cA lot of the thought process happens after, when we get asked questions about it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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. \u201cIt\u2019s changed massively, but it\u2019s also about experience and just, like, practicing,\u201d explains Nina. \u201cWhen we come off tour, I think all of us have some areas we wanna get better at.\u201d She\u2019s the guiding force of the interview \u2013 or at least she tries to be. \u201cI\u2019m gonna try and get a bit worse,\u201d says Jezmi, derailing things once again. \u201cI think I\u2019m averaging one string break a set at the minute, and I kind of need to be averaging three.\u201d \u201cYou are too good,\u201d adds Sam. \u201cIt\u2019s just cringe.\u201d He\u2019s donned some oversized sunglasses. Real, not digital.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs there a power struggle between the three of you?\u201d I ask at one point. \u201cYour eyebrows are saying there is a power struggle,\u201d Sam replies. It\u2019s just a few breaths after Jezmi suggested they interview me, so that one\u2019s water off a duck\u2019s back. \u201cI think a trio is always an interesting shape,\u201d Nina muses. \u201cIt\u2019s really hard for someone not to feel left out,\u201d adds Jezmi. Who\u2019s that, then? \u201cI\u2019m a perpetual loner. Nina\u2019s a perpetual loner. We all probably think we\u2019re the person who feels left out, which is why we\u2019re all terrible human beings.\u201d I\u2019m not going to call it a vulnerable moment \u2013 it\u2019s never quite clear what level of irony bar italia are operating at \u2013 but there\u2019s something there.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Listening to Some Like It Hot<\/em>, it\u2019s clearly a dynamic that works. Where their earlier work was, as Nina puts it, \u201chook-led\u201d and \u201cirreverent\u201d, often at the expense of feeling finished, the kinks are ironed out on the new record. \u201cFundraiser\u201d, the album\u2019s first track, jangles its way to an earned chorus in a way their earlier work deliberately avoided. Elsewhere, on \u201cRooster\u201d, Nina ditches the subdued approach for something confident and insistent. \u2018When you say jump I jump<\/em>,\u2019 she demands. They\u2019ve got better, just like Nina said \u2013 even if it risks alienating fans who loved the slacker quality they\u2019ve now outgrown.<\/p>\n

Sam would say I\u2019m fishing for compliments (and he actually does say that) but I have to state it for the record: it\u2019s the nature of the job to ask strange, cerebral questions. \u201cIf you take the PR stuff too seriously, it\u2019s gonna really depress you,\u201d explains Jezmi. \u201cSometimes you do get a bit depressed in interviews and you\u2019re like, why are you asking me a question about something I don\u2019t understand? Why does anyone want to read this? Ultimately it\u2019s imposter syndrome.\u201d As the interview winds down, Sam offers a summary: \u201cOur album\u2019s about performance, your interview\u2019s about interviewing.\u201d \u201cPostmodernism is back,\u201d he adds as Jezmi switches to a pirate hat and eyepatch.<\/p>\n

The last time I saw bar italia, I was nearly following them on stage at Tufnell Park\u2019s The Dome. I\u2019d arrived late and wasn\u2019t 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. \u201cYou could interview us,\u201d says Sam. \u201cWe could take a break and have a two minute sit down.\u201d \u201cShould we just get all the press for the rest of the year outta the way at the gig?\u201d adds Jezmi. Maybe that\u2019ll actually happen. Maybe I\u2019ll get an email nearer the time. It\u2019ll just slot into the thread, right after the one from their PR apologising for the chaos of this call.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Listen to Some Like It Hot\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

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Photography<\/strong> by Grace Pickering
Styling<\/strong> by Doug Broad
Words<\/strong> by Amber Rawlings
Hair<\/strong> by Ash Hill at W Artists\u00a0
Make-up<\/strong> by Seunghee Yoo at W Artists\u00a0
Fashion Assistant<\/strong> Molly Swatman
Special Thanks to The Black Eel\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t17 February 2026\t\t\t<\/div>\n
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Culture<\/a><\/div>\n
Feature Interview<\/a><\/div>\n
Magazine<\/a><\/div>\n
Music<\/a><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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\n\t\t\t\tKehlani Is Out of Bounds<\/span> <\/span><\/a>\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wonderland BAR ITALIA\u2019S CUP IS OVERFLOWING 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. \u201cDo your research,\u201d implores Sam Fenton with a wry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,257],"class_list":["post-1776261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-wonderlandmagazine-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1776261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1776261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1776261\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1776261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1776261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1776261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}