The Twits. bar italia

On Tuesday we reported on 'Exit Strategy' and on Wednesday on 'A Living Commodity'. Today number three of three recently released records that can be placed into the alternative rock section but above all drew quite some attention. Today bar italia's The Twits.

The album is bar italia's second in a very short time. The name came by this spring but it's impossible to listen to everything. This time there was more reason to listen, based on the information reaching me on this record. And I can only convey that the attention the album receives is justified.

The Twits shows how different bands in the alternative rock bin can be. bar italia loves throwing in some dissonant tones into the whole. Leans more towards punk than rock and presents a sound that is more like wading through flooded moors in Yorkshire than the chimes of newly restored church bells. I anything, the album sounds like a band recorded live in a too small room, absorbing all sounds instead of making them seem wide.

As such there are some musical historical lines to bands like Ghetto Wars, Cloud Nothings and The Thermals, all from the U.S. underground. All bands where intensity topped clarity. The more surprising is that this is a London, U.K. based band, named after a pub called Bar Italia, with capitals. The trio, Nina Cristante, Sam Fenton and Jezmi Fehmi, has been releasing music since 2020, at a fast pace I noticed without having noticed at the time. In 2022 the band signed with Matador and in six months has released two albums already.

The band mixes lead singers the whole time. Where Cristante is concerned it is easy to discern, but listening to the album, I get the impression that all three sing lead at some point. It gives a great sense of variation to the The Twits. The is reflected in the songs. bar italia excels in varying its songs as well. Don't expect full out punkrocking songs but influences from 80s doom as well. Songs in which it is all about tension created by a sparse but sustained guitar strum, sparse bass notes and held back drumming. A ghostlike lead guitar hovering through it all tops a song off, e.g. in 'Shoo'. And here you have the major and positive distinction with the above mentioned U.S. bands.

The album's opening song, 'My Little Tony', sets a different tone though. Here the trio goes full out, in a punk imitation of The Velvet Underground. A song that drew me into the album within seconds. A song this good, has to be the start of a good album; and it is. Different from what I expected based on 'My Little Tony' though. Like the song starting as a ballad, 'Twist'. Nina Cristante even comes close to a French sigh girl in the way she sings. So unexpected, yet so good. The song slowly but surely changes its atmosphere thanks to a dirty, distorted guitar. The album manages to surprise a few more times and scores a few points extra along the way.

As The Twits ends this three days of new alternative rock bands, I also have to give a summary. No matter how different the three bands are, with bar italia definitely winning on the diversity score, I have to conclude that I have not been able to hear an original angle on the three albums. What I have found is a load of energy, truckloads of it in fact. Here the other two bands win on points. All in all, the attention the three albums receive is well deserved, as you have understood from my reviews already. Time will tell how far the bands will go but on the basis of these albums, the prediction of a decent career is not hard to make.

Wout de Natris

You can listen and order to The Twits here:

https://baritalia.bandcamp.com/album/the-twits