NITS, THE MOVIE

WORK is an excellent album. I find myself returning to it very often. It has an existential aura that fits our day and age just perfectly with its anxiety-laden lyrics and sounds. Even in these early stages of Nits’ music project, you could sense that something out of the ordinary was taking place in their way of handling pop music. They had images in mind … and people and objects moving around. There is a suspense present in the songs which almost feels like you’re watching some sophisticated cinema drama or a live theatre play. The opening song -The Lodger – mimics the theatrics of a murder mystery, the song’s title is probably also referring to one of Alfred Hitchcock’s first feature films about a serial killer in London. The album then continues with those eerie histrionics in the spooky “Footprint”. And listen to the way “Hobbyland” finishes with its finest little tail of suspense that holds your attention and prolongs your curiosity into the next sequel of their Work fabrications: they make their own world in their own house, in their own time, everything true to scale – the stage is set behind the dark curtains in front of which they are posing – in jacket and tie – on the front cover of the album.

There is an obvious mise-en-scène occurring in songs like “Slip Of The Tongue” and “Red Tape”, the former has the typical cartoonish speeding-up and slowing-down tempos of characters moving about the screen; the music seems to take its directions from a cineast conductor who is fully aware of its dramatic qualities. Along the same lines “Tables And Chairs” performs a musical stage dance. “Umbrella Army II” – with its vivacious circular movements – could be the accompaniment played by a small orchestra, to a silent movie starring Charlie Chaplin. And “Goodbye, Mr. Chips” – bearing the same title as the movie about an old schoolteacher looking back at his past – reminisces in a repetitive, upbeat melancholy about schooldays past. It is clear that The Nits love the theatre and the cinematographic scene. Their musical world is firmly embedded in it and will remain true to its dramaturgic inspiration. Their own life world will take shape in this sort of musical theatre setting in a very natural way. NITS, THE MOVIE was first created here on WORK! Its first chapter … of many still to come.

Although Nits can play any sort of music hall or festival, I’ve always thought that their music fitted the old, traditional, curtains-style and plush-red-seats theatres best – resembling an old-fashioned cinema. With chandeliers and people dressed up for the occasion, that’s how I envisage my ideal Nits performance setting. Their music always has that certain je-ne-sais-quoi, it is chic and stylish, it is classy, noble and elegant just like its frontman who is always wearing a fine suit. Elegance in the hands. The music refers to a time – present past or future – where composition and creation are eclectic, cultivated, “aristocratic” – in its more democratic sense of elegant in behaviour – gracious, optimistic, intelligent and discerning. An idyllic time for sure, but when I look at the three Nitsmen today, I think they might just represent or approximate this ideal of artistic creativity.

And then there was also this fourth, former Nits man Michiel Peters. One of his silver-screen ruminations on WORK turns out to be my favourite of the album. It is the tiny, forgotten song called “Man-Friday”, after the legendary literary and film character named Friday who first appears in Daniel Defoe’s famous iconic novel Robinson Crusoe. A dramatic story turned into a song. By those images-making musicians of Nits. Out of nowhere came these men who knew how to synthesise all sorts of forms of creativity in a music configuration as simple as it is natural, as complex as it is cultivated. 

“Man-friday” is mysterious and pensive, expressing a sense of alienation, loneliness and paranoia, still with a touch of humour too – “the weekend close at hand” – but above all beautiful!. It reminds me of the adventure movies I used to watch when I was younger – a genre I’m still fond of … A scene from the movie. With every album Nits leave us in suspense on what will be the next sequence in the unfolding of the plot in their movie of Life and World.

Joke Roelandt, September 2023