Ground Control Touring

Some Like It Hot is a 1959 film starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon about a group of rogue musicians on the adventure path. It is funny, sexy, rambunctious and evergreen – a showcase of a triple-threat cast at full-throttle. Some Like It Hot is also the new album by London three-piece bar italia, and certain parallels are perhaps not accidental. It pulses with romance, intrigue, self-discovery and rapture over lustful rockers, spellbinding folk pop, punch-drunk ballads and undefinable moments that sneak up on you like a burst of 5pm sunshine. The record is the culmination of the joint inner world of Nina Cristante, Jezmi Tarik Fehmi and Sam Fenton – three singer-songwriters who have transcended their underground roots to embrace a bold, widescreen horizon.

Take the multitudes contained within ‘Cowbella’. The lyrics are a character study and/or assassination of a mysterious female protagonist, where kiss-and-tell gossip devolves into obsession: “Did she run or did she stay / whats it gonna take for you to say? How was her mother? Did she have a father? Did she keep a lover between the lines?” Unfolding over a wiry, shapeshifting rocker that arrives at a skywards coda of ghostly vocals, it’s a multi-pronged anthem that only bar italia could conjure.

On ‘Marble Arch’, a playful shuffle like a midday stroll through Itchycoo Park is undercut with Cristante’s relaxed lilt: “I dreamt you hung yourself / And my little sister too / in desperation”. Fenton muses about “rain in london town / it reflects all the feelings of people around”. We are all walking around some part of a city trapped in our own thoughts, it seems to say. But the power of bar italia is where their voices join in a chorus of devastating poignancy, as with Jezmi and Nina’s: “What you doing in my head again / You dont belong here, you never did”.

The synergy of this three-way blunt rotation is embedded in the trio’s DNA. Cristante brings a studied actors’ sensibility to vocals ranging from honeyed (the aforementioned ‘Marble Arch’) to hell-bent and possessed (‘rooster’). Fehmi ranges from airy, brooding baritone (‘Lioness’) to mic-chewing megaphone histrionics (‘omni shambles’). Fenton, a wispy tenor, can veer between mystical melodicism and soaring blue-eyed soul within the same 8 bars (‘Plastered’).

The cultivation of their sound, from early homespun recordings like hand drawn sketches (the band presented an exhibition of their drawings in 2023) into the ceiling-wide brush strokes of Some Like It Hot, was chiselled via a relentless writing and touring schedule. When bar italia emerged in 2023 from an underground following to release two critically acclaimed albums on Matador only several months apart – the poised Tracey Denim and the grand The Twits – they were a shy, eye-contact-avoiding band, starting sets in darkness and just as soon disappearing backstage. They spent the next two years traversing the globe, with headline performances from Istanbul to Tokyo, sold-out multi-night stints in New York and Los Angeles, and festivals including Corona Capital, Glastonbury and Coachella. With over 160 shows worldwide across 2023-2024, they dispelled any mystique by becoming an exhibitionist and muscular five-piece that gives multiple encores – equally comfortable at festival mosh-pit incitement and moments of pin-drop intimacy.

Some Like It Hot is telling of this journey: a collection of rock songs voraciously embracing the main stage. The lightning choruses of ‘omni shambles’ and ‘Eyepatch’ show a band who have mastered melding their idiosyncrasies into tightly coiled pop songs. ‘Fundraiser’ is kinetic, its charcuterie of jittery hooks threatening to spill over as Fenton sneers, “must be an actor the way you play”. A pining for tangibility abounds: “just show me the face that you’ve been trying to hide”, Fenton opines on the Balkan-tinged waltz of ‘bad reputation’. Other songs surrender to abandon wholesale: “I was lost to the world from the moment we kissed”, Fenton sings on ‘rooster’, while on the 12-string new wave majesty of ‘Lioness’, Fehmi states, “You have no idea what I can do for you when I’m in this mood”.

bar italia have married their serious and heartfelt subject matter with a joy in showmanship. These are songs that twist their quirks into huge choruses, and find elevation in tension, playing with self-identity, emotion and performance until the lines blur. That 1959 Hollywood classic from which the album takes its name ends with the immortal line: “Well, nobody’s perfect.” This, however, comes pretty close.