Bar Italia Surrender Clarity to Volume at Metro Theatre

Before attending their Metro Theatre performance last Wednesday, December 10, I could only tell you three things about Bar Italia.

First, they are a scintillating London-based trio who, with two impressive albums to their name and have been turning heads within international rock circles since 2023.

Second, their wild, electric guitar-heavy style and punchy tongue-in-cheek lyrics have drawn welcome comparisons with icons of the 00’s indie sleaze scene such as The Arctic Monkeys and Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

And finally, having read accounts of their previous week’s performance at Victoria’s famous Meredith Music Festival, the band’s live act on this Australian tour has been raising questions.

“Their sound was intriguing,” Scenster wrote, “but something just didn’t feel quite right – it seemed they were having quite a few issues…”

So, with hesitant scepticism, I wedged myself within the sea of youthful sleaze, and amidst plumes of cigarette smoke awaited whatever triumph or disaster would follow on the Metro Theatre stage.

Initially, as the silhouettes of Nina Cristante, Sam Fenton, and Jezmi Tarik Fehmi appeared in a line, backed by touring drummer Liam Toon and bassist Mathilde Bataille, I worried my scepticism might be justified.

Issues with the mixing were immediately apparent. The restrained, dreamy guitar of the band’s opening number, Kiss My Era, clambered intrusively over Cristante’s barely whispered lyrics. And unfortunately, despite a tide of calls from the audience for the vocals to be turned up, it quickly became clear this issue would persist throughout the night. During the louder, more chaotic songs the vocalist would scream into her microphone to little or no effect. Against the storming guitar, her voice was so inaudible the microphone might as well have been turned off.

Though this problem was less noticeable with Cristante’s male counterparts – Fenton’s urgent tenor and Tarik Fehmi’s often furious baritone sharing a considerable amount of the vocal performance – as the set progressed, the band’s lyrics became more tools of rhythm than points of focus.

Having accepted this reality – which may very well have been a stylistic decision considering the similarities with the Meredith set – everything else about the band’s performance began to shine.

In the moments she was not singing, the way Cristante danced in the centre of the stage was infectious. It appeared as if she had been picked out of a wind-up music box and placed before us, statuesque. Though rather than a ballerina spinning to a generic ‘tinkle’, Cristante – with her slim red and black laced dress, red high heels, and long black hair flying around her shoulders – was more a figure of stylish, carefree fun. And the music she surrendered to – delivered with enthusiasm by Fenton and Tarik Fehmi who bent low over their instruments, baring the strings to the audience – was wild, electric, and teeming with feverish riffs.

The charisma in which the band performed – cycling between moments of cool restraint and vicious emotion – inevitably wore the Wednesday evening audience down. All concern about the mediocre mixing of the vocals soon dissipated, and rapidly people came together in joyous sweaty dance.

All it took was the explosion of the band’s anthemic Nurse! for the audience to finally devolve into a raging mosh. For the remaining forty-five minutes punters were flung in all directions, spat into the calm periphery before – taking the role of vocals upon themselves and screaming them like a war cry – diving back into the pit.

Ultimately, despite its technical shortcomings, the performance was a triumph. Bar Italia had delivered what the audience expected them to – a deafeningly loud live experience which stated unequivocally that the age of guitar music is back.