Halcyon Days

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.

For me “Das Mädchen im Pelz” has become the personification of the “embellished” theatre pop that Nits embody. Nits may not be the only band introducing this sort of refined theatre to their songs, but they surely bring one of the most subtle adaptations of musical stories to the stage. Like a girl who is wearing pearls on her skin and a fur ornament around the neck – a fashionable accessory in Titian’s time -, showing off a little, but in a perfect, idealised manner of restrained, albeit luscious beauty. Nits were never short of writing a history of beauty throughout their numerous songs inspired by their eye of the beholder. They have an often classic, but also playful eye for what is beautiful, an image of The Beautiful is always in the back of their mind when composing music, while never forgetting the everyday beauty: the girl is pointing to her Pelz or perhaps to the vaccination mark on her arm in an anachronistic perspective.There are quite a few songs in the Nits repertoire that could bear the stamp of “Best – or most representative – Song of Nits” and this is certainly one of them. And without a doubt one of their most beautiful.

We are used to the fact that the music of Nits gives the loveliest shapes to the colours and images Henk Hofstede is singing about. The older they get, the more their music took on this discreet mission of providing a stage for all things beautiful. The albums Knot – with the painter’s colour Ultramarine – and Neon – abundant in red, green and blue -are centred around their eye for beauty. Not in a screaming, in-your-face way, but almost unnoticeably, they gave all these things of beauty the most becoming frames. “Das Mädchen im Pelz” reminds me of dressing up in costumes for an imaginary play, or finding old clothes in the attic of grandma and grandpa. This song seems to be written in honour of all the beauty that goes unnoticed, all the stories that remained unstaged, all the small, almost insignificant events that were never witnessed by anybody. The song wants to stage the world of small things, lovingly supplying the costumes and other decor requisites. The beauty and scope of this song – in its demure simplicity – are unsurpassable in my eyes. It reminds me of the serenity beauty bestows. Oh all those years of inspiring, untroubled musical moments Nits entrusted us with! “Das Mädchen im Pelz”, just like the painting by Titian, holds together the eternal beauty of all times. No mean feat, but Nits can do that! The first notes of the song are like the opening of the curtains on a small and intimate stage and what follows is like the story of all stories – how they all unfold – but most of all a nitsean story of beauty.

This Mädchen im Pelz, this song of beauty, are a joy for ever.

Joke Roelandt, February 2023