Nits Descending

Malpensa is a puzzling album. At first, without the obvious sound of the guitar, it seems quietly demure: percussive instruments, a selfless standing bass and a by nature, slightly egotistic trumpet, contrasting with rational electronic sounds and beats. But rhythm solves the puzzle… Nits are a romantic band, we all know that. But perhaps never more than on this fly-away album. I’m of course using the word ‘romantic’ in its original sense, as it was used to define a certain free, self-expressive, individualistic tendency in European poetry and literature, which in its abhorrence of enlightened rationalism, advocated the original, authentic imagination of the artist as the ultimate way for aesthetic creation. The romantic spirit is characterised by extremes, by opposites, by a fervour for life on the one hand and a reflective, brooding propensity on the other.

Perhaps the album Malpensa even contains the most explicit and implicit references to the feeling of love (just count the number of times the word appears…); also in this sense it can be called their most romantic album, and that comes as a surprise, because of course neither the typical, Hofstede-lyrics nor the alternating, light, heavy-handed, dark, threatening, energising, sleepy rhythms announce the theme of Eros and Psyche. It’s about a love that stays on and lives in the soul, that appears unexpectedly amidst our train of thoughts, that doesn’t want to be forgotten, that still holds a promise in it, even after so many years passed in darkness and uncertainty. Malpensa balances on the rhythm of a music of dance that seduces, on the rhythm of the prosody of words that remember, or of a lament on the loss of righteousness, of the timely work of colour of a painter, of the eternal circle of love through darkness and light, of the precarity of hopes and dreams, of a love lost for ever. Malpensa thrives and reposes on the dynamics of the beat and of love. The video I chose of a song I really like a lot, “Big Black Boats”, shows exactly what I mean. A music theorist once defined rhythm as the artery which carries life to music and this lively, vivacious song of both hope and despair is invested with almost violent emotions by the drums. Threatening skies full of black birds, the colours of danger, orange, red and purple almost seem to be induced by the feverish sound of the drums. And on the other hand, rhythm can bestow rest, peacefulness, a carefree predictability which reassures us, like the coming and going of the seasons. “Blue Things” with its tender, simple rhythm of snow flakes falling down, of the rain, of clouds slowly drifting by in blueness, is such a perfect beacon of quietude and ease, a welcome breathing space for the romantic soul. The ping-pong electronics of “Schwebebahn” uniting both these aspects of rhythm in the undecided outcome of a quest for a long lost feeling of belonging to someone, somewhere. And listen to the beautifully solemn progression of the song “Love Locks”, guided by Henk Hofstede’s voice towards a resurrection into eternity of this simple and sublime feeling, surrounded by the alchemical sounds of water and metal…

It’s as if the music, the lyre of Orpheus, brings back memories of all the things that have lived in every Nits song ever written, and of all the people who inhabited the songs, who inspired the songs, of places of course, old European towns, of artists, as if everything is revisited in a romantic spirit of remembrance. Malpensa holds in it the in-love-soaked poetics of a musical time and space that engulf us so tenderly and bring us closer to the core of our being, to what it means to be alive, through the calm and the storm. A voice, music, can indeed be the ultimate resort of retreat for the romantic soul. And we can always reboot and find ourselves in rhythm. Many an art form can bewilder us, enchant us, but never like music can… You can live your life listening to music as an accompaniment to your daily wheelings and dealings, as a trusted friend who is always there, as a proof that life is made out of the promise of love. Malpensa shows that the poetics of love are the drive that has always been at the heart of Nits’ creative world, in a subtle, unusual, phenomenological way, which turns out to be the most enduring, stable and rich kind of this universal sentiment that is called love. It’s always there, it has always been there even when it is left unspoken, especially when it is left unsaid… Nits are certainly romantics of the understated feeling, here on Malpensa, once more.

The same dichotomy between lightness and darkness penetrates into Henk Hofstede’s voice. It often sounds deeper, darker, lower than usual, descending in a musical underworld that swallows his sunnier alter ego in its dark, cavernous mouth, retrieving some darker aspects of the Nits soul out of a hole in time. As if both Leonard and John passed through his mind. And since the guitars are left behind, a sort of calm and peace returns, a concentration, a focus, a retraction and expanding, like a deep, refreshing breath, only now and then interrupted by the drums’ ability to mimic the excitement of the heart. As in the continuous rhythmical circle of history repeating itself in “Bad Government and its Effects on Town and Country” and of course in these “Big Black Boats”. This last song has something primitive, instinctive, even entrancing about it that is so overpowering.

And look at the video-decor in the background with a very romantic animation film featuring a big sailor bloke and a refined, pretty girl in a long white dress and hat… I imagine her jumping out from the screen onto Henk’s shoulder when he sits behind the keyboards, and whispering in his ear ‘ Love never dies’. Ah Nits will for ever charm us… 

Gig of the Nits in “Het Paard van Troje”, The Hague on 21-12-2012, playing Big Black Boats.

Joke Roelandt, April 2020