bar italia At 93 Feet East London
Brick Lane, the East London street known for bagel shops, its connection to the infamous Jack the Ripper murders of the late 1880s, Indian restaurants that’ll convince you they’ll do a better price than their competitors, and blatantly overpriced vintage stores.
On the nineteenth of June, two nights off from summer solstice, Brick Lane added host of the first show of bar italia’s 2025 tour. The show at 93 Feet East was my second time seeing the band, nearly a year to the date after their show at Melbourne's Howler last June. The show marked the launch for their single “Cowbella”, the first of what I can assume is from their upcoming album.
Released a few days prior to the show, “Cowbella” was plastered on stickers and t-shirts. On my first listen to the song, I wasn’t a fan, wondering if this was the beginning of the bands falling off, thinking ‘No one can be good forever, right?’ The opening lyrics of, “Got a lotta friends got a lotta friends but not many like you” felt like a corny Britpop song and the hollering throughout reminded me of the “uh huh’s” in The Offspring’s “Pretty Fly for a White Guy”. It was far from what I expected from the band who has been celebrated for their cool and mysterious allure. I questioned if maybe it wasn’t unplanned to have this impact and it could be them entering post-ironic territory, moving away from the cool, nonchalantness that characterises their previous releases.
Anyways, I went into the show with an open mind sure I was about to have a nice time. They were great when I saw them last, other than some issues with the sound, which wasn't the band's fault. Upon arrival at the venue, I was met with a level of security that was beyond anything I expected. I’ve never experienced that much security to see a band on a Thursday night, or any night for that matter. Being used to the security guard asking for my ID, inspecting the photo for three seconds, then looking back up at me for less than a second to make sure he can see the resemblance between me aged twenty four and the weird looking sixteen-year-old with a teethy smile that should be far too obnoxious for a driver’s license. At the entrance of the venue, I was met with that, then the scanning of my ID and a photo of my face taken by some high-tech machine with a webcam connected that would've been perfect for a skype call from the desktop.
On the next step my bag was thoroughly checked, waved with a wand to detect any metal, and I was forced to throw my water bottle out as if I was at the airport about to board a flight. I made it through thinking about why it was so intense and realising that knife crime is a real thing here, and those procedures were probably necessary.
Making it in just before the opening act of Stuart Mackenzie, an artist, poet and of course musician, who graced the stage solo armed with two pairs of glasses, an unlit cigarette and a SP404. Her sunglasses came off halfway through the set, providing a more sophisticated look to match the suit she was wearing. An act reminiscent of fellow poet and musician, John Cooper Clarke, with a similar dry humour paired with a witty joy and pure wordsmithery. I loved every moment of it. Fun and exciting, with lines full of wit and backing tracks you could dance to.
There was a twenty or so minute break between the sets. In that time the venue really filled up with an obscene amount of camouflage and army hats. The crowd was friendly, everyone was happy to be there, up the front no one felt too cool to have a nice time which was refreshing and not what I expected from a London crowd. It was 30 degrees outside, and the venue was even hotter. Everyone was drenched in sweat from the first song. I expected the crowd even without the heat to stink, however, somehow it didn’t smell bad at all. Maybe British bar italia fans are fonder of showers and deodorant than their Australian counterparts. Someone did fart a third of the way through the set, cropdusting the crowd, that made me giggle.
The show begins, the band look excited, this is the first time they’ll be playing five new songs live. There are five of them, Sam Fenton, Jezmi Tarik Fehmi, Nina Cristante, as well as a drummer and a bassist/backing vocalist who I feel should probably start getting credit as being part of the band. As they start playing, I am instantly intrigued by Sam’s outfit, thinking ‘What the fuck is he wearing’, on stage left, he’s looking like a British tourist on holiday in Benidorm, complete with sunburnt legs. In a Walmart-esque girls t-shirt, with a low neck and short sleeves and with a graphic of red lips, over the knee slim fitting sweatshorts that read “New York” down the left leg and flip flops – the flip flops were epic though, I must say. It looked like he’d just run through a charity shop trying to get the most ridiculous outfit he could put together in the minutes prior to going on stage. It’s the next day as I write this, and I still can’t tell if the outfit was post-ironic. Maybe this was a part of their entry into the post-ironic territory beginning with “Cowbella”, or maybe a strategic ploy to put more attention on Nina, who in the middle of the stage was dressed in a beautiful white dress which like her hair flowed in the wind of the fan at the bottom of the stage.
The show was amazing, they played hard and fast, much harder, and faster than I was expecting, everyone was dancing the entire time. “Cowbella” live even was redeemed, the song is fun, and being a four-and-a-half-minute song with verses from all three of them, by the two-minute point you forget about the “Got a lot of friends” opening. It was a much more electric set than I was expecting, the guitars and drums were loud and the vocals from Sam, Nina and Jezmi matched perfectly, it sounded amazing. Watching the band play together it’s clear that playing live is something that they’ve mastered, playing over one hundred and sixty shows across 2023-2024, they’ve had the time to do so. They are a band, not just a group of people who play music together, you can tell that they all riff off each other and their energy.
Nina was flowing around the stage looking like she was having the best time, her hair was flying everywhere, and her erratic arm movements matched the excitement of the crowd and the new songs. Jezmi, was moving around very spontaneously but with less spins than he did at the Melbourne show. Disappointing, the spins were awesome. That high energy of the band was matched by the crowd who towards the end of the set unexpectedly erupted into maybe one of the largest pits I have ever seen, at least a third of the crowd smashing around in there to a fast-paced rendition of “Nurse!”. It was really sweet. The new songs which were great, and I now would like to retract any thoughts and earlier statements of the band’s possible “falling off”. I had such a nice time and I’m so glad I made it to the show. I’m excited for the new album and if they come through your city on the tour, I wholeheartedly recommend going to see them play live.
They walked off stage and came back with an encore of “Skylinny”, everyone went crazy. The show finished, I was a sweaty mess with a smile on my face, it was one of the funnest shows that I’ve been to in quite a while. I feel like that was the consensus of the evening too. I was hungry and embarked on a journey on Brick Lane in search of food, stumbling across a Morley’s, the chicken shop known by everyone, or at least everyone who I’ve spoken to it about as a “South London Classic”, I was in east, but I think the spread across the Thames is a new thing. Why did the chicken cross the river… sorry, it was too obvious. I got a bossman burger meal with some BBQ wings. It was awesome and made me glad I’m not vegetarian anymore. Seeing arguably the most London band of the moment, finishing off the evening with a London staple, felt right. Thursday the 19th of June was a great night for a boy in a city where his nondescript, metropolitan Australian accent sounds as ridiculous as Crocodile Dundee.