Nits

Inception

Tables & Chairs (the very first text I wrote about Nits, on the occasion of their 40th birthday, September 2014)

Still my favourite band after all those years: Nits: they are different to the core, Einzelgänger, the perfect antidote to all that’s fake and hip, musical aesthetes of pop, worshippers of tables and chairs, shoes, mountains, rivers, cars, boats, canoes, bikes, trains, trees, nights and days, houses, dreams, wind and rain, moon and stars, pencils and buttons, umbrellas, pelicans and penguins, Tintoretto and Henry Moore, strawberries and orchards, and all things blue… What more does one need?

They seem to succeed effortlessly in turning the abstract, furtive and fleeting matter of music into concrete, instrumentally and vocally rendered little tableaux that evoke the world as we see it with our eyes, feel it with our hands and feet, dream it in our hearts… In a subtly phenomenological way they picture perfectly what it means to be-in-the-world, surrounded by big things and small, natural things and artistic objects, – nothing too close or familiar to be noticed by them -, amongst giants and dwarfs, seeing, feeling, remembering, imagining, their musical wanderlust reflecting an inquisitive mind and an insatiable appetite for the kinetics of an always receding horizon; all this as the playful soundtrack of a thoroughly lived in, idiosyncratic time. In their minute attention to musical detail and through the patient and thoughtful unfolding of their songs, we can hear the forms being shaped, the elusive presence of the music watercolouring our moods. A tangible world laid out at our fingertips, in front of our feet, with nothing in between but these paintbrush notes. A music of floating cloud like shapes and changing colours. Listening to “The Eiffel Tower” you get one of the prettiest views you’ll ever hear. No small feat for such tiny creatures…

The texts that follow are part of a larger collection of short essays – in the format of a pop song – that I assembled over the course of a few years under the title “Being Nits”. They are not an introduction to the work of Nits, but rather an invitation to listen more closely to their music. I kept them short; they are meant for slow reading…

In order to fully take in what it is I’m writing about, it is paramount to listen to the albums or songs I am musing about. My reflections don’t have the aspiration of wanting to stand on their own: they are a tribute to the world Nits created through their music and visual art. The music comes first.

I felt the urge to write about this Dutch band soon after I discovered their music in the late eighties. Their songs were always on my mind. And I had the intention to try and write something different from what I found in the many reviews that honoured their work over the past decades. I felt I had something to add to the way their work was being received.

The title of this collection “Being Nits” first of all refers to the phenomenological notion of Being as it was used by Martin Heidegger – amongst  others – in his treaty Sein und Zeit, an essential book in the history of phenomenology. I tried to reinterpret some of his ideas in a very subjectivistic manner, in order to apply them to the musical creations of Nits. Clearly the philosophical work of Heidegger was not at all intended as a subjective analysis of the notion of “Being”, but I thought it interesting to mould these ideas in my very personal way to arrive at a depiction of the music of Nits. The title further implies that the music of Nits sketches a very idiosyncratic view of the world, it conveys their very own personal way of being and a sensibility that became their typical trademark. Their music embraces and refers to a whole world of both innerness and exteriority. Their music is a way of being. A way of Being-In-The-World.

Click here for texts related to specific albums.

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Nits.

Breaking the Mould of Pop Music: 50 Shapes of Nits

The sixth shape is the Lycabettus Theatre in Athens: Music Box Theatre: Coming Home to the Lycabettus Amphitheatre

The fifth shape is an Umbrella: Jeux d’Eau

The fourth shape is a Brick: THE WERFBAND

The third shape is a Big Brown Building: House of Jacob: An Autobiography in Music

The second shape is a smile: It Started with a Smile

The first shape is the Bauhaus Chair: Connection

Being Nits

When Nits’ Playhouse Burned Down (March 2024)

The heart of the album “Tree House Fire” houses a tree and a bird. The third and innermost song of “Tree House Fire” is called “The Tree”. The third song of the album “Giant Normal Dwarf” was named “Boy in a Tree”. We find ourselves once more …

Music of the Seasons along the Street of Life: The Autumn of Nits (March 2024)

Some music videos are iconic. The video Nits made to accompany Cars & Cars is certainly one of them. In fact my favourite way of listening to this song is watching the video with the version of Cars & Cars that is tied to it…

Two Forgotten Love Songs: Sorrow and Wall In China (June 2023)

Sorrow. Nits didn’t write many classic love songs, not many love songs tout court. And this one certainly isn’t a classic one in the sense of a mainstream or traditional love song. I adore the lyrics that speak of a sort of love/hate relationship and of a girl …

When The Blossom In Spring Is Falling (May 2023)

Lately I have been thinking a lot about Nits. Probably not unrelated to the news about his sudden illness that Henk shared with us a few weeks ago. And then listening to some music, the Beatles song “Dear Prudence” came up and I was struck by how much John Lennon’s voice resembled Henk’s…

Metaphysics Dressed Down in an Overall: Home Before Dark (November 2019)

“Home before Dark” is a much loved Nits song. Usually played as one of the encores, with Nits gathering together at the front of the stage, close to their audience, it’s almost like a cosy campfire song. I love the video Nits made for it…

“Curiouser and Curiouser”, Alice Said (May 2019)

“Curiouser and curiouser”, Alice said. As she was growing taller into a giant, and then smaller, like a dwarf. Why would this album be a favourite of so many a Nitsfan? My guess and feeling is that it expresses Henk Hofstede’s and Nits’s view on music most closely …

Ice Princess or the Intuition of the Music Moment (October 2019)

When I listen to this song of marvels and watch the video, I really feel that something quite extraordinary is happening here. Something literally out of the ordinary, in music. This is so wonderful and I cannot begin to say why…

A Christmas Fairy Tale: The Ice Princess and her Boy on a Tree (December 2020)

Somewhere in a Nits album, a miniature universe lies hidden in a fragile, ethereal reality shaped in the unfathomable interplay of music and words. One I always love to return to. Everything always seems to fit into a world of music. Especially …

The North Of Existence: Two Skaters (December 2023)

For those who feel like thinking about one of the most essential Nits songs … A perfect antidote to the excesses and extravagance of the festivities of this time of the year is Nits’ Two Skaters. A wonderful song of inwardness and sobriety….

Smoke on the River Amstel: A commuNITS Manifesto (December 2023)

Between “Penny Lane” and “Dapperstreet”, there was another milestone of “neighbourhood-street-writing”- a forgotten one – with young Henk Hofstede in ballad mode – a cross between Paul McCartney and Elton John and with the piano in a star role. A melancholy of the beginning …

The Tender Humanism of Nits (November 2023)

No-one will deny that the musical creations of Nits developed into the project of a whole life. Their music is narrating the ongoing present of the experiencing of life in the here and now. It is what music does best, it is what music, in a canny, suggestive way encourages …

Nitstopia, The Movie part 2 (November 2023)

Do you know the story about John Lennon’s little boy Julian? How one day – after school – he showed his dad a drawing he made, which he had called “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”? It inspired John Lennon to write the song by the same name and to come up with the lyrics referring to a world of wonder and daydreaming…

While the Guitar Gently Waits (October 2023)

NITS, THE MOVIE (September 2023)

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 …

The Boy in the Tree (September 2023)

When a boy wants a peaceful view of the world at large, what does he do? When he wants a little adventure and to see things differently, what does he do? When he wants some time to himself to dream and feel …

A Touch of Rob Kloet (June 2023)

Tomorrow the 16th of June it’s Rob Kloet’s birthday. Together with Henk Hofstede he has been with the band right from the start and never left Nits. As one of the core members, his influence and contribution to Nits can’t be …

The Eiffel Tower: A Little Philosophy Of Music (June 2023)

In a movie I recently saw, called Tár, there’s a poignant scene where you get a peek at a recording of Leonard Bernstein giving a lecture on music. What he says is that music essentially is movement, that the meaning of music lies first and foremost in …

Nits in the House of Pop (June 2023)

In one of his typical introductions to a song by means of detailed and lively anecdotes, Henk Hofstede tells the story of Nick Drake visiting John and Yoko’s beautiful countryside home, built with the fortune of pop success. “This is how rich successful pop artists live”, Nick says..

A Nits Character Speaks (June 2023)

I am a little penguin. I don’t know how I got here on the cover of a wintery Nits song (Wish/Bing Crosby’s On The Radio) bringing good wishes to the friends of this beloved band, but I’m very happy and honoured to be here on this white background, probably..

Romancing The World (Nits Design Part Two) (June 2023)

The one attribute that sets the music of Nits apart from most of its pop counterparts must well be the peripatetic nature of the way they move between different worlds of experience and between different realms of the world of artistic creation. Theirs is an intrepid voyage …

The Four-Letter Word (Nits Design Part One) (May 2023)

A few days ago I received this cd in the mail with three Beatles covers by Nits. Nice to listen to, but I found myself very taken with the way the small blue thing looks and I realised that no series of reflections on Nits could ever be complete without …

Nescio: The Boy who Wanted to Create his own World (April 2023)

This is a strange song. Nescio. Even when you’re very familiar with it, the song remains somewhat of a unique specimen in Nits’ repertoire; it stands out. It is one of their best-known songs and – inadvertently – it holds the key …

A Walk in the Zoo: Establishing a Home Through Music (March 2023)

Three little sisters and a bear get lost in the zoo of Amsterdam. The premise of an almost parablelike tale. Of being lost in a world where nothing is familiar anymore and one loses all one’s bearings and connections with one’s own small existence. This song so beautifully situates …

Halcyon Days (February 2023)

An old Nits single that crackles a little. “the Nits in a play” is written on the front cover with the portrait of a girl wearing a zibellino, a fur scarf loosely wrapped around her shoulder. Titian often painted this young woman – la Bella – as an idealised figure of beauty …

Neon or the Philosophy of Birth (February 2023)

When you drive 50 km east from Liverpool, you arrive in Pendlebury, a small industrial town where the painter L.S. Lowry lived and worked. I have no idea whether The Beatles meant anything to him in his later life, probably not, since he died in 1976, but music played quite an important role …

The Girl Who Never Made It (January 2023)

“Forget me not!” Henk Hofstede repeatedly sings at the end of Espresso Girl. And I never forgot her. She is at the centre of one of my favourite Nits songs. She is a beauty no-one notices and that is a great pity indeed. And on top of that she features on an album that hardly anyone likes…

About a Photograph (December 2022)

Imagine for a moment that Rob Kloet would be wearing an all-dark outfit as well. Wouldn’t this photograph lose some of its splendour? Rob’s jacket is like the pearl of Vermeer or the light that softly falls into the room from a window …

Neon: Saying Goodbye to the Light (October 2022)

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 …

The Things-World of Nits (September 2022)

It’s easy to see how Nits go about their daily business of making music. The artwork of Nits always kind of offered a peek into their creative processes. A radio, a saw, a big drum, a lamp above a table, a piece of soap, houses, a feather, buttons, rooms with views, abstract paintings, postal stamps, trees, a rowing boat …

The House (In Loving Memory of De Werf) (May 2022)

I’ve been inside The House only once, but it was enough for it to become for me one of the most magical buildings in the whole world. Like no other band, Nits know about places and buildings, about houses…

Freckles – We waren jong toen de dag begon (April 2022)

In the beginning… there was a tent. I know that strictly speaking, TENT wasn’t their first, but this second The Nits album certainly was the spark that ignited the fire… Young Nits whose beginners’ white skin was still very prone to freckles, …

And Sometimes a Nits Snowflake Even Falls Down in a Desert Far Away from Home (March 2022)

When Hilde Hoekstra (a remarkable painter herself) posted the video of her recording of the new Nits song “Ghost Ranch”, I immediately took to it. I love the way it sounds and the tale it tells. And I like what Henk does with the guitar, ever so …

In Brown Shoes: Walking in Nits History (September 2021)

The passing of time is a curious thing. Most living creatures on earth are not concerned by it, not even those who sing from trees, like birds on a wire. But one boy in a tree is: his name is Henk Hofstede. And by extension, Nits are too. As provident …

How I Like Nits Best #4 (June 2021)

As Minimalists Geometers drawing musical line and curves alternated with dots and dabs of colour strokes and accents, sounds of the wind in the reeds …

How I Like Nits Best #3 (June 2021)

Nobody knows what has happened to Walter and Conny. They were silenced into this tantalising instrumental. I mostly prefer pop melodies with vocals and lyrics. I have this weird association that instrumental music is like a …

How I Like Nits Best #2 (June 2021)

Framing the faces of four kids, these four postage stamps send us a letter from a past not too far away. With the stories of an eternal childhood as in an illustrated children’s book. The little histories are sung in a voice with the vintage timbre of …

How I Like Nits Best #1 (June 2021)

There are lots of good audio recordings available of Nits concerts, but very few good camera registrations of gigs and theatre tours which is such a pity. I don’t really need to explain why… especially what regards the theatre tours…

Or Would You Prefer a Dishwasher? (April 2020)

Now I don’t know how things happen in your kitchen after a home cooked meal, but I have the impression that in Nits’ kitchen it can be quite a racket at dishwashing time… Not many plates surviving this daily cleansing ritual without getting …

Nits Descending (April 2020)

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 …

Massaging the Drum: The Sensuality of Nits. (February 2020)

Nits aren’t considered as being sexy. As you might have noticed most members of this group (Nitsfans) are male; female adoration was never their fate. Henk, Rob and Robert Jan aren’t exactly known for their sex appeal (correct me, ladies (and gentlemen), if I’m wrong…)…

On the Secret Power of Shoe Polish (February 2020)

“The Infinite Shoeblack” is not an everyday concept. But I came across it in an eccentric philosophical novel called “Sartor Resartus” (“The Tailor Retailered”) by Thomas Carlyle. Now, philosophy books often hide curious thoughts in them, but this one, well, it exceeded all my previous encounters of weirdness …

A Home in Time (February 2020)

We’ve heard the song a million times, we might even have become tired of it. It almost bores us so to speak, by way of its familiarity and everydayness. By its repeated appearance at the end of every show. It’s so odd then that, even after multiple listenings, this song still holds …

Nits: The Parable of Blue (December 2019)

What struck me most was their poise, this graceful bearing which often comes with the composedness of self-confidence. While Henk tried to explain how “Knot” came to be, referring to this sort of instant composing which was the immediate result of a few sessions of free improvisation, I answered bluntly …

“O Europe! O Ton of Honey!” (December 2019)

As you can see from the many lovely posts already made on the concert at Brussels’ cherished music temple, “Ancienne Belgique”, we really had a party last Sunday afternoon. Nits love playing in Brussels, especially at the AB …

A Little Bedtime Story about a Blue Butterfly and his Friends (November 2019)

It’s sort of strange that no-one else mentioned it – we got to see a few cute photos of the vinyl release of dA dA dA – but the texture and feel of the remarkably sweet and much-treasured cover of this album are pretty exceptional too. Such a well-cared-for release! The cover almost has the real look …

Spirits in a Material World or the Sacredness of a Viola (November 2019)

Missing a Bauhaus Chair was easy. Missing a mum and dad is much harder. Familiar objects have a tendency to stick around, great artists’ works survive forever. Together they make for a bizarre experience of our world, where spirits connect and form the strangest assemblages with …

Alankomaat (Waiting for Solmu) (October 2019)

Have you ever been to California? I have, although I’m not an avid traveler, but I have family there. I am one of those people who travel to see relatives or friends rather than to discover new places. Odd huh? Traveling for pleasure is a relatively new thing though …

Of Bits and Neatles (October 2019)

Do you know the song “The Beatles and The Stones” by House of Love? It is about all that splits the world in two, about foes and enemies in life and precious, comforting friends in music. If you like to cut corners and get straight to business, you might prefer The Stones and their bright red, thick lips….

The Mystique of a Shirt (September 2019)

On this day, the birthday of Henk Hofstede, on the brink of autumn – probably one of the most melancholic days of the year, of saying goodbye to summer – here is a tribute to him with one of the finest compositions of melodic poetry by Nits …

“Work” or the Fabrications of the Mind (September 2019)

A few weeks ago I walked into a vinyl record store in Ghent, just curious to see if they’d stock any Nits albums. And they did, six of them: “Tent”, “New Flat”, “Work”, “Kilo”, “Adieu Sweet Bahnhof” and “Henk”. I took them all home, even if I didn’t posses a record player, but my birthday was coming up soon. I was especially enchanted about …

Take this Nits Waltz … (August 2019)

With “Adieu, Sweet Bahnhof” I am once more treading on thin ice in Nits-album-ranking territory. But I like a challenge… A quick look at the index of songs and a furtive reminder through the ears, classify it as a possible Merchant-Ivory music production of a Nits album …

In the Dutch Mountains: Tintin, Suske & Wiske, Jo, Suus, Jokko & Nits (August 2019)

Even if “In the Dutch Mountains” was their most successful album, it has very often been taken for granted, with only three songs (the title song of course, “J.O.S. Days” and “Two Skaters”) getting a regular, appreciative mention…

Slow is the Opposite of Quick (August 2019)

In the unabridged dictionary of Nits idioms, Strawberry Wood could be the antonym of New Flat. Perhaps. Creativity comes and goes like ebb and flow. And phases of doubt and status quo are only natural. I wrote down some loose impressions on both of these albums in this slightly irreverent article of these two very different Nits records …

Losse Flodders? (August 2019)

1974 was obviously a good year for Nitsfans, the album “1974” was received a lot less enthusiastically by many of them though, who all seem to share the opinion that it consists mostly of – to say it with a somewhat pejorative Dutch expression – “losse flodders”, usually referring to loose, ragged or sloppy …

The Haptic Sensuality of Wool (July 2019)

Today, all alone in the house, I decided to really listen to some music, filling the living room, – through the long tall black loudspeakers – with the clear, gracious sounds of a Nits album. For this summer’s day I chose “Wool” and its wise balancing between Eros and Thanatos. Wool is soft to the touch. I play it …

Tin Ting (June 2019)

There are lots of music genres. Some of them, more than others, lend themselves to reflecting on the nature of music itself. Pop music is not one of those. Although I don’t consider the genre as “thoughtless” – I have been a devotee of pop ever since I was a young girl …

Parlez-vous français? Sprechen Sie Deutsch? (June 2019)

Je ne vous ai pas encore écrit sur “Les Nuits”, pourtant un de mes albums préférés des Nits. Having grown up in the outskirts of Brussels, but in a Flemish community, I know all about a split linguistic personality. Furthermore I studied at a Flemish university still bearing the scars of a little language war, …

Die Befindliche Holländische Berge: A Vision of Beauty in Pop Music (November 2018)

It is Friday evening and I am sitting in the soft twilight at the kitchen table listening to this real beauty Nits made, named “angst”, a little Dutch masterpiece filled with fragments and scenes reminiscing on some momentous days in time. In the clair-obscur of the soft summer darkness and the fluorescent light of my laptop, I am instantly transported to …

“Ting” by Scapino Ballet and Nits (September 2018)

I have always loved this line. Henk Hofstede models and shapes a musical world out of moving images. Images of movement have always been a crucial part of Nits’ playing field. Rob Kloet rowing in a little boat across a river in the Dutch mountains, the Panorama man’s playful acrobatics with a chair on a rooftop …

Early Morning: The Sound of Young Familiar Voices (August 2018)

This is the sound of young familiar voices accompanying my roller-skating and hair-in-pigtails days and later on my high school days, although I wasn’t aware of them at that time. I discovered Nits a year or so after “In the Dutch Mountains” was released, by chance, with the radio on. Studio Brussel …

Nits and the Girls (May 2018)

Now, Nits stand out in the pop music scene in quite a few ways, but perhaps one of their more striking singularities is that they don’t particularly seem to be known for their sex appeal (correct me ladies if I’m wrong…). Their music is more often sensual and has, almost never, a sexual undertone. It goes together …

Once upon a Time in the North (February 2018)

Here’s the story… Once upon a time in a cute, historic northern town of busy merchants, golden painters and glittering canals, four brave and adventurous musicians decided they were not just going to be making music like everyone else…

Weiter Geht Es Nicht… (November 2017)

Worshippers of – among many other things – rivers, I then wrote. In one of the last lines of the last song of their latest album, Henk effortlessly sums up the whole idea behind Nits’ lyricism and the nature of their musical identity: “The river is a synthesizer”. The syntax of their musical compositions …

Fearless Cows without References (September 2017)

It’s Friday night and I’m writing at the kitchen table, still listening to this real beauty Nits made…I had been warned though. The pre-release of “Pockets of Rain” had alerted me that something good was about to happen …