bar italia are going back to the garage.
For those unfamiliar, bar italia is a London, England-based band specializing in their own brand of moody, off-kilter and charmingly experimental guitar alt-pop. Itโs hard to square them into a genre, but the ol’ reliable โpost-punkโ label may be a half-decent signifier for curious ears.
Recently, bar italia released their newest single, โmy little tonyโ.
โmy little tonyโ is the first single from their newly announced upcoming album, entitled The Twits (releasing November 3rd on Matador Records). โtonyโ throws aside the slick, dynamically matured and produced sound of their previous release, “Tracey Denim”, in favor of a surprisingly raucous sound and rawer sensibility.
Itโs a tune that rambles as much as it roars.
Things kick off immediately upon hitting play. Guitars- already around peak volume- charge in, blended together with the delightfully distorted bassline in a thick soup of rock-and-roll bliss. The chords are a bit muddled in the cacophony, but not enough to warrant concern. Itโs fun.
Nina Cristanteโs playful and smoothly mocking vocals follow almost immediately; โyour pretentious waysโฆ make me die a little,โ she sings, humbling an ambiguous subject (Tony? Is that you?). The rest of her first verse continues in a similar fashion, and her refrain โkeep playing with my receiving handโฆ โcause you know you lost the gameโ plays well after the home-run hook that gets laid down by the band. Things repeat and continue.
The brief instrumental towards the end of the song provides a fleeting break from the loopy structure, but when the refrain begins again, you find yourself feeling as though there are perhaps adjectives besides โloopyโ that better characterize the continual nature of the track. Maybe โawesomeโ is a better word. Or perhaps youโre too busy tapping your foot to care.
The track ends the same way it began: without apology.
Alternating between spaced-out, delightfully dusty yet infectious late-night-walk-home rock and lushly charged indie that nears a description of anthemic, bar italiaโs last album “Tracey Denim” was a hooky, thoughtfully produced crop of moody bangers. Things seem to change with โmy little tonyโ; whereas “Tracey Denim” recalled the darker, more geometric songwriting of early-2000s Pinback or Interpol, โtonyโ harkens back more so to loosely spun garage influences of the same era.
The band retains its edge and recognizability with their simple, catchy vocal lines and hallmark London aesthetics, and despite its heavy strumminess, the track fortunately manages to avoid straying too close to the unforgiving gravitational pull of the (arguably) overly revivalist (and now dated) garage rock sound of the 2010s. โtonyโ is familiar, but thankfully it doesnโt beat a dead horse. Both Tracey Denim and โtonyโ prove that a certain degree of referentiality is okay, and bar italia knows this more than anyone.ย
Does it set off alarm bells for a shift in their sound? Perhaps itโs a bit early to tell. But make no mistake- this is still the bar italia we love- and they (and I) think you should stick around for more.
Watch the music video for “my little tony” below.
-mike utt
