Mistletone

bar italia TOUR DATES:

JUNE 4: SYDNEY @ Oxford Art Factory. Pre-sale here.
On-sale here: 9am, 15th March
JUNE 6: BRISBANE @ Black Bear Lodge. Pre-sale here: 9am, 13th March.
On-sale here: 9am, 15th March
JUNE 8: MELBOURNE @ Day Tripper, RISING.TICKETS on-sale 12pm, 12th March

Mistletone proudly presents the debut Australian tour for trio bar italia. The London based three-piece of Nina Cristante, Jezmi Tarik Fehmi and Sam Fenton bring their two full length 2023 releases The Twits and Tracey Denim (Matador / Remote Control) to RISING’s Day Tripper lineup at Melbourne Town Hall, plus club shows in Sydney + Brisbane.

bar italia’s economical yet evocative song craft takes raucous, mystic, unkempt, occasionally sinister, and wholly committed turns. Songs like ‘my little tony‘, with its in-the-red riff and excitable hooks, the cathartic four-on-the-floor of ‘world’s greatest emoter’ and the festival tent psychedelia of ‘Hi-fiver‘ need little in the way of exposition – these are exhilarating rock songs, if wayward and strange.

Other bar italia moments see the band’s increasingly signature, three-act mini-dramas moving into previously uncharted territory. Cristante, Fehmi and Fenton can each manifest a different melody, mood, and cadence – at times overlapping and linear, at others unexpectedly divergent – often within the space of thirty seconds, a tag team rooted in shared language and kinship. ‘Jelsy‘, for instance, plays out like a conversation between friends over wistful, buzzing country blues, the alternating voices at points comforting, wry and hopelessly yearning. The sinuous, slow-burning waltz of ‘twist‘ stands out in its bare lyricism and seems to invite each band member’s individual take on a confessional.

 bar italia’s Matador debut Tracey Denim was notable for its compact 2-3 minute compositions, horizontal and open-ended tracks like ‘Shoo‘ ebb and flow, moving from reptilian dive-bar soloing to a palpitating two-note piano coda. ‘glory-hunter’ takes playful twists and turns before ending up somewhere entirely different from where it started. ‘Real house wibes (desperate house vibes)’ and ‘que surprise‘ imply sleepless, noirish misadventure, while at the other end of the light spectrum, ‘sounds like you had to be there‘ features some of the band’s most sweetly optimistic musical gestures yet. Closer ‘bibs‘ is a rare instance where all three can be heard in unison, as a procession of ghostly chords and lacerating feedback bookends the group’s most adventurous and rich set to date.

It followed a string of word-of-mouth releases on Dean Blunt’s World Music label and received widespread attention from publications including The Guardian (“one of the albums of 2023 so far”), The Times (“excellent debut album”), The Observer(“Artist To Watch”), NME (“a lasting impression that’s all of their own making“), The Quietus (“endlessly evocative”) and Pigeons And Planes (“quickly establishing themselves as one of the most enticing upcoming bands”). Single ‘Nurse!‘ was playlisted on BBC 6 Music and received spins from BBC Radio 1, Absolute Radio and NTS.