BAR ITALIA
The Twits (Matador)
London trio Bar Italia’s second album of the year (after May’s Tracey Denim) begins full of promise, with grungy fuzzbomb My Little Tony, but give or take a couple of tracks it’s all downhill from there. What’s most disappointing, personally speaking, is that all the right musical touchstones are at various times present and correct, and yet the results are almost routinely dull and directionless. They’re not so much bringing something new to the table as sucking the lifeblood out of Sonic Youth, The Jesus & Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine et al.
Nina Cristante, Jezmi Tarik Fehmi and Sam Fenton each take turns at the mic, but, while you can applaud the egalitarian ethos, none of them do so with anything approaching distinction. Maybe I’m missing something – after all, Matador Records have heard enough to give Bar Italia their backing – but these listless, scrappy, scrawny songs seem like little more than smudged sketches.
words BEN WOOLHEAD