London's bar italia craft woozy, moody indie rock equally informed by post-punk, shoegaze, and lo-fi without ever sounding too indebted to any of these styles. Early on, the London trio were affiliated with Dean Blunt's World Music, and releases such as 2020's Quarrel and 2021's Bedhead were of a piece with the label's sludgy, hallucinatory experiments. With 2022 singles like "Banks" and 2023's full-lengths Tracey Denim and The Twits, bar italia took a slightly more polished approach that didn't sacrifice any of their volatile, hypnotic essence.

Though bar italia kept a relatively low profile, the trio -- singers/songwriters/multi-instrumentalists Nina Cristante, Jezmi Tarik Fehmi, and Sam Fenton -- were part of London's underground music scene in the late 2010s and early 2020s, collectively and individually: Fenton and Fehmi met at a 2018 open mic night, and soon formed the the grungy indie duo Double Virgo. After moving into a flat together, they met their upstairs neighbor Cristante, a transplant from Rome who issued hazy, lo-fi pop on Blunt's label as NINA. The trio began playing together in 2019, and started working in earnest during the COVID-19 global pandemic. bar italia's first release on World Music, November 2020's Angelica Pilled EP, offered murky shoegaze and featured a few songs that also appeared on the band's debut album, Quarrel. Arriving in December 2020, the effort expanded bar italia's horizons to include hints of folk and elliptical electronic music. In March 2021, they returned with Bedhead, a fragmented collection of vignette-like songs that emphasized their moody spontaneity and featured a cameo from Mica Levi.

In 2022, bar italia issued several singles, starting with March's "Banks," which was followed by May's "Miracle Crush," and November's "Polly Armour." These tracks, which reflected a more elongated and polished approach, were gathered on an EP sold at bar italia's show with Coby Sey and other dates. Around this time, the band also played the Pitchfork Music Festival London and supported Martin Rev. Early in 2023, bar italia signed to Matador, which released their third album, Tracey Denim, digitally and on CD that May and on vinyl that September. Recorded and produced by the band and mixed by Marta Salogni, the record leaned into the hypnotic, bittersweet qualities of the trio's music. The band reunited with Salogni for their second album of the year, November 2023's The Twits. Crafted over the course of eight weeks in a home studio in Mallorca, its twisting songs paired cleaner production values with heavier, noisier guitars. ~ Heather Phares