The Garden Center or Spirits in a Material World

50 Shapes of Nits: The nineteenth shape are the plastic rococo chairs

Of course there is “Walking with Maria”, a beautiful tribute to Mum. But then there is also “The Garden Center”, the Mother-Song from the album KNOT. This second album of the angst/Knot/Neon trilogy is not the most popular one amongst fans, but to me it still sounds like pure genius. Nevertheless to truly appreciate this genie or magical spirit that roams through the album KNOT, you need to see it performed live. This tour was one of the highlights for me of all their concerts so far. Luckily my husband made lots of recordings of the songs played during this tour and I’m so happy that I can still relive some of these moments. In my view this was one of Nits’ magical mystery tours, so full of fantasy, theatre, circus, voodoo, enchantment, sorcery, masquerade and musical and gestural magic of all kinds, stand-up comedy, wonderful tales of memories of family and artists of the past in a musical time-frame where present and past mingle effortlessly. It was a tour de force by just three musicians who created something out-of-this world, but – and this made it all even curiouser and curiouser, almost all the songs and titles were made up of concrete things, that we can easily imagine and see in front of our eyes, real people in a real world which music turned into this fantastic tale called KNOT.

The melodies of KNOT are certainly not amongst their most catchy ones, but they are the most delicate, intricate, fragile and minuscule melodies Nits ever forged. And the melodies that ring through “The Garden Center” are so fine that even plastic rococo chairs become some of the most beautiful objects you can picture on that moment in your mind’s eye. Listen to this music-moment: where the music of Nits lifts up our material world into something spiritual … maybe, yet I think Nits don’t like this dichotomy, their music – and words – smiles on it with tenderness and empathy … and then it simply moves on … back to the world …

Yes, Henk Hofstede’s poetry is once more as meaningful and beautiful as it is simple. In memory of his mother – “my viola” – he asks her to take his eyes in her hands and walk him through some of her favourite places where she used to pass her time, sitting amidst porcelain dwarfs and next to the coffee machine. A rain cap, a handkerchief and peppermint paint the loss in a tactile presence that tastes and feels its way through the musical lines of the song. Henk Hofstede always makes music come down to earth, once more and for ever. “The Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost are gone to the Christmas sale – 80% off Mother Mary”, such a touching down-to-earthness; Henk Hofstede just smiles at the world and how it made us into creatures who think, worship, belief, dream, hope or invent … With lots of compassion and tenderness for human nature. Music is the way of trying to understand and trying to feel the magic of the world and our being. Nits are so well versed in turning the world into a magical, fairytale place. This world here and now is the promised land, where in the streets of our youth, the girls and boys in a tree that we once were, can create our own way through life with joy and fantasy.

And the pop guitar accompanies this tale so eloquently. How wonderful it sounds as it escorts the language of Henk Hofstede and speaks in the same tongue as John, Paul and Leonard, same subtlety, same genius. In a spirit of togetherness.

A mother and son in Liverpool in the rain. Just like music, life never ends, the guitar only changes hands and trembles as this one song ends. Like a flower trembling. And I am under its spell: what else is music than the spirit in a material world? – I ask myself.

KNOT is a web of telltale threads where everything binds together naturally … where world is one.

Joke Roelandt, February 2025