With a slot at Glastonbury’s Park Stage under their belt, and a string of gigs coming up in Europe, Iceland and South America, playing Southwark Park’s Rally Festival in their home turf of South East London probably felt quite homely to Bar Italia.
For festival-goers, too, the day had a homely feel. A festival in its infancy (this was its second year running), Rally proudly embraced a DIY aesthetic, stages looking home-built with their scaffolding barely concealed by sheets of coloured plastic.
This rough and ready spirit certainly took root in Bar Italia’s set. 20 minutes of their 45 minute slot was lost to an issue with the sound, leaving the expectant crowd under heavy rain with only painfully repetitive soundchecks to listen to. Fans were kept in place perhaps only by brief sightings of the band themselves; their heads bobbing in and out of a thin line of vision between the low stage roof and a sea of umbrellas. The eventual launch into their set was a clunky one, singer Jezmi Tarik Fehmi’s mic didn’t work for the first couple of songs, finding him battling in vain against the rest of the sound for his solo verses.
But the band weathered these setbacks well, driving their performance with precision and a high energy that brought vitality even to sluggish tracks like rage quit and Jelsy. A few songs in, Fehmi’s microphone now working to platform his anguished vocals, the crowd had warmed up and a moshpit blossomed, seizing the spirit of the lyrics ‘I just wanna lose control’ (Punkt) and ‘you move like crazy to your favourite song’ (Nurse!).
One of the quirky charms of Bar Italia’s music is that on most of their tracks, the trio take it in turns to sing. While united by themes of dissatisfaction and feeling lost, about people, love, and life in general, they each bring what feels like their own personal take and spirit to the songs. They seem to maintain this separation on stage too, each singer standing apart with a unique presence. Nina Cristante spins around like a ceilidh dancer who has lost her way, smiling as she sings in her slightly off-key, sing-song-y tone, tambourine in hand. Sam Fenton is calm and still, with his softly sad Pavement-esque vocals. Meanwhile all Fehmi’s movement is contained within his face, eye and eyebrows creasing, mouth swinging open and closed as he delivers his rough crying tones.
This aversion to delivering a seamless and coherent image, feels in keeping with the band’s general reluctance to please fans. Their online presence is about as minimal as it can get in 2024, the Bar Italia Instagram patched with infrequent and low quality images donning captions communicating only the essential information about gigs, singles, and album releases. There is no pre-concert ‘we are at this stage’ messaging, no reposting of fan footage post concert, and certainly no insight into the band’s behind-the-scenes antics. This elusive attitude feeds into their visual aesthetics too, the Tracey Denim album cover image distorted with a retro filter that would have been all the rage in the 2010s, and the home page of their website a hyper blurred photo of a London night bus.
For all this evasion of pleasing contemporary audiences who have come to expect high definition insights into the personal lives of performers, Bar Italia have accrued a cult following of sorts. On their Instagram, there are people from across the globe begging the band to come and play in their country, and at the Rally gig; there were committed fans managing to mouth the lyrics even as they moshed and crowd surfed through the set.
The reason for their popularity might well be the band’s lack of interest in presenting a palatable image. This attitude harks back to core 90s grunge and slacker rock values, rejecting music industry conventions and a need to appear ‘slick’, in favour of a more unrefined, laid-back presence. A revival of this spirit could be appealing in today’s world where we are deluged with hyper polished images of performers and peers alike. Sonically too, Bar Italia can be found to align with the slacker rock style, many of their tracks sporting dissonance and lax vocals.
But Bar Italia’s convergence with grunge/slacker rock does not translate to a lack of integrity or standards when it comes to their performance. They were committed to an energetic set throughout, and played one more track after they were asked to leave the stage, wanting to honour their full set list after the late start. During this final track, Cristante was not at all phased when a security guard came onto stage, instead she took his hands and invited him to join her in a dance. It’s a comical moment that sums up the band nicely; laid-back, slightly rebellious, but overall committed to the music and having a good time.
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