On the Latest Album of Nits: NEON

Saying Goodbye to the Light

Right from the start, with the early release of Beromünster – a song that remained so lonely for so long, floating around on its own – I had sensed the darkness. Later on it was confirmed by the escapist mood of a lonesome Sunday painter in an Orwellian setting. Neon opens in the smoke and the rain, a familiar Nits scene. But in artificial light everything looks different. And an indubitable shadow has made its way into their music studio. Albeit that the play of light and shadow only beautifies this Nits world we have gotten to know so well for so long. To me Neon feels like the most melancholic of all their albums … and Nits are good at melancholy…

The estrangement of a world of workers and factories in the opening song, the painter in his claustrophobic room of ticking clocks, the sleeping mother, all hint at a certain uneasiness that had already manifested itself at times in the first two parts of this Nits trilogy – angst, Knot, Neon – which is of an almost postmodernist, fragmented, improvisational nature. The unease picked up a few sharper edges along the way which are now being transformed into a sense of alienation only tempered by the solace art brings. But you wouldn’t guess from the jolly rhythm and the happy musical atmosphere that accompanies the painter on his daily round. The mechanical rhythm is softened by a slightly defiant attitude of the music, unwilling to adapt to the starkness of a grey, programmed and monotone world. Instead, on Neon, the colours abound, but in a different way; they are no longer taken for granted in the merciless progression of time. The coloured world is in danger. And Nits don’t want to get used to the dreariness of a nightmarish world of stone ; listen how the percussion lights up and engages in a little dance when Lowry thinks of his drawing of Proserpine and the hope of a woman in his life, out of the depths and grumbling of heavy, stone drums in Spoken.Time is the leading actor on Neon, the drums and percussive sounds lead the way as the colours of memories are fading. But how beautifully the keyboard, guitar and electronical sounds prance and twirl around the earnestness of the deep drum of time. As in The Ghost Ranch, where an enthralling meeting of kindred spirits gathered around a radio, is taking place…

.The album hovers between the warmth of a cherished, lived-through past and the distance and menace experienced through the passing of time. The colour red pops up a few times, a sign of danger, a warning. All sorts of mediums lie at the basis of the haunting lyrics – which really stand out for me – radios, cameras, polaroids, names of technological devices, a remote control, a green eye and even a good old fortune teller and a crystal ball. It’s clear that the Nits world is being observed, manipulated, captured and recorded for posterity. “Let’s wave to the future – She said to the camera”, she never said that before… Henk Hofstedes lyrics – in all their simplicity – have reached a peak of expressiveness and together with the music they lay down an ungraspable, almost grievous, heavy-hearted atmosphere; it all feels very confusing, a sense that memories are devoid of the flesh and blood of life, beautiful as they may be. It is precisely the contrast between the sweet softness of what once was and the shattering menace of everything falling apart or fading away that makes out the beauty of this third part of the Nits trilogy. Sleeping in the Corbusier chair sounds so cosy, but in the reflection of the mirroring glass the young girl is no more.

A spooky undertone wades through songs like Beromünster and Lina Bo Bardi. The latter starts off almost in the manner of a lullaby, caressing the sleeper in the Corbusier chair, followed by a whistling which is both soothing and menacing, the music whispers under its breath: “But then… ”, as if to say “watch out”, it spells out danger, loss, death. And there is the drum of time once more, threatening, merciless in its provocative rhythm. It scuffs its way out, wrestling with the voice of memory and then one of the most wonderful moments of the album occurs in what sounds like the dawning of a new sense of time or hope or a feeling of beauty, which always accompanies the true feeling of melancholy. And in what feels like the most tender instant of Neon, the sleek artificiality of the remote control and the Kodachromes restores a temporary but deceptive peace of mind. The design of Lina Bo Bardi is Nits Supreme!

“Life is full of good things” suggests the sturdy piece of marble in a room, even if they don’t last as long as this collector of memories and things that is the mantelpiece, collector of the dust of time as well. But Mantelpiece still sounds tidy and clean, an optimistic-natured unclutteredness rules this gorgeous song. The instrumental Neon is the guest of honour on this magnificent time-infused album. It sounds not unlike the solo work of the artful drummer that is Rob Kloet. The drums show their true nature, their true role on Neon: the sly, secretive little devil that creeps up on you and catches you when you least expect it. The electronics laugh at us with an unkindly grin, like a jubilation of artifice. Together with the drum, they are the masters and they know it. The rest is mere decoration, frills. In Tremolo the voice speaks out its trembling fear, again in the most speaking words, a mix of hope and regret. In Peugeot 504 Robert Jan imbues the music with colour again. But although the car is green, blue is the colour memory wears in this song. The gorgeous blue of the Rosary Chapel designed by Henri Matisse. Have you seen its blue beauty, have you heard the blue melancholy notes of the pining keyboard? But “On the last train to A” – a stunning free verse that is a song on its own – all the fortune teller can see is red.

The atmosphere of Neon is very peculiar. I can’t really compare it to anything else I heard or saw before. It’s true and false at the same time. Benevolent and merciless. Hopeful and desperate. How Nits achieved this is a mystery, as always…The lyrics almost betray the beauty of the music. They tell of breaking, of loneliness, of waving goodbye, of falling down. “Have you heard the birds? – Forget their song”, how cruel! Henk Hofstede captures perfectly what is really going on here in one of his best verses “Time is walking into spaces”; there is that drum again… like a character from an Orwellian novel. The drum surveils all. “When a Tree” has a woodpecker and its tree disputing the pace of this most reflective of songs. “Fuck said the rain” to the tender world of Nits it once was an innocent part of. But no longer… “water drops in a dark stream”. There will be no rainbow. Only in the wistful and dapper Peninsula, the music tries to rewind, in reverse mode with a backward rhythm, but it doesn’t seem to arrive quite at its wished-for destination. It stays stuck in an “almost”, tasting of a candied, long-lost longing.

The voice on Neon feels like a lonely soul in the midst of an artificially reconstructed world of memories, of a bygone past. And the future mingles in as a science-fiction creature. In The Weaver – which sounds like a solemn ritual of farewell – the music bends and plays with the plasticity and elasticity of its time where a young boy is looking at all his coming years through a crystal ball. The drum is hiding behind his sweet, wolf-in-sheepskin, percussive and electronic allies… But for how long?

It’s already November. The light has changed.

Joke Roelandt, October 2022