Music Box Theatre: Coming Home to the Lycabettus Amphitheatre

The sixth shape is the Lycabettus Theatre in Athens

The silence of anticipation is present in a music hall …ssshhhhh… Just look at the very first image of this gilt-edged videoclip, pause it for a moment. You see Nits, the three men standing or sitting still, motionless… waiting… as quiet as a mouse, in what seems like the cutest music box theatre you can imagine. If I’d have to make a portrait of the band in pictures, this could be one of them. A tale of music is about to begin …

Nits have always had a knack for the theatre, without being theatrical. In the subtlest of ways they earmark their music with the finest requisites of the stage – stage props and decors which accompany the allure of skilled performers who know how to entertain while showcasing their musical finesse full of life’s wisdom -; they possess the most exquisite sense of framing their songs, of arranging and situating their musical world in a tender eye-frame of innocent charm, of childlike endeavours of strange constructions and buildings where they can let their musical fantasies wander around freely. Because their music is an art of the imagination, of visual ideas. Nits’ art is one you need to attend in person while it is being enacted, preferably in a beautiful theatre – the etymology of the word “theatre” harks back to “a view”, something to see, a performance to watch. Their music is an ingenious craftsmanship that tells the fantasised story of daydreaming instruments drawing handwritten fairytales. Their music is a world you need to see, if only in your mind’s eye. That’s why I like watching them on stage, in a visible world that they like to create, not separately from the music though. You always feel intuitively that the images on stage and the music share the same limpid, playful view of our world. And in a tradition which in our Western world probably found its birthplace near the Lycabettus Hill, they like to tell the Story of how and why stories are being told…on ancient wooden floors. The story of what happens when the curtains are opened.

There’s something very primal about Nits and their art, however utterly sophisticated they and their music might seem. It has that original touch which is typical of the early, spontaneous stage of any flourishing bud or the natural commencement of a life still full of wonder. Nits are thaumaturges, workers of wonder, their music seems to originate and tell the story of looking at wondrous things or recounting wondrous experiences, which they turn into music. Their music has the pristineness of a fresh unspoiled forest, with the archetype of youth, a childlike being exploring its surroundings like in an eternal narration of fiction, driven by an honest and natural longing for a continued innocence while relating to and finding a place in the world. I think this is perhaps the most defining character of Nits which sets them apart from other pop bands, knowing how to maintain this pristine unspoiledness and naturalness. In a nonchalant, self-evident manner, they bring an ode, once more and for ever, to the prowess of fantasy.

Although the narratives which make up this long forgotten story aren’t exactly happy ones, the music sounds quite hopeful and optimistic, the promise of an eternal future lying ahead, still vividly present in a heart and mind filled for ever, so it seems, with the joy of youth. It reminds me somewhat – out of context – of a song on their album KNOT, “The Delta Works” and the figure of aunt Eleonore, an older lady who talks to the flowers and the birds and the trees, who, as we are being told by Henk Hofstede, does all sorts of crazy and wild things in her life. Even when life is finite, a childlike heart can remain fully alive at the center of our soul: “Draw me a city, where I can walk in the streets of my youth…” Yes, draw me something, paint me anything, take a piece of paper and fabulate a world for ever there, for ever young.

It’s as if those long forgotten stories were played by a street organ rotating and delving out, from the vast, fertile grounds of human artistry, all sorts of long bygone tales in a folkloristic sounding street theatre. Telling stories above all is – and should be – fun, as is listening to them. In this song Nits seem to celebrate man’s naive inclination to fabricate and recount all kinds of anecdotes and the bigger stories too, small, trivial ones and the significant history-shaping chronicles. Tragedy and prayer on the stage of life, or… on the stage of a quintessential European concert hall in Athens. The sad ambiance of lost and forgotten things is transformed naturally into a cheerful fairground atmosphere with circus sounds and the determined tread of a marching band. On we go… In their song writing Nits often allude to and embrace effortlessly the historical and cultural heritage of times past in a rhythmical narratology. It turns this Nits song once more, into an essential impression and reflection on man’s curious nature and his instinctual need to express himself for his own sake and for the sake of others. In the circular lines of the Lycabettus theatre the stories of mankind unfold. In musical movements of life and history Nits feel at home in the narratives of ancient places and times. They like to continue the thread that started long ago …

Nits play their instruments with the enthusiasm of the young ones. They embellish and accentuate beautiful music lines with sudden, dramatic caesuras, make the music stop with great oomph and a wink of the eye, then make it begin again, right from the start; they never tire, da capo is their motto, a new story commences, every album is like a new, fresh beginning, blow the horn through the forest, make animals’ ears rise up and pay attention to the songs of life. The trumpet calls, the band plays! We laugh and we cry… We cherish this closeness of the stage to our inner world, seeing and hearing our stories being told by masterful reciters. They make us forget all the doom and gloom. The importance of a stage where we can see ourselves reflected… The barrel-organ sounds always happy. In this music box a world is for ever alive…celebrating itself, naively, as if there’s always another day.

The city of Athens is very dear to Nits. They wrote a song about it on their album 1974: “It’s running through my veins – I’m in Athens and it rains”. They covered it with the wet weather of The Netherlands. And they followed the path leading down from Lycabettus Hill into an ancient city of stories.

The sixth shape is the Lycabettus Theatre in Athens

Joke Roelandt, May 2024