Nits as the Perfect Hosts

The twentieth shape is the Mask.

Soon it will be the time of year again to celebrate the tradition of Carnival! I was born in a Flemish working-class city that is best known for its famous carnival parade. It made its inhabitants of the rebellious kind, weary of any form of authority and with a tendency to mockery and free spiritedness. It’s the time of masquerade balls.
One of those balls is the title of a KNOT song; it is called “Dead Rat Ball” and I love it! In his introduction to the song Henk Hofstede talks about the city of Ostend – the Belgian coast town where the ball takes place around this time of the year, a tradition instigated by the artist James Ensor, amongst others, – and how the houses and streets seem to glide into the sea, the mystery of it all painted by Ensor and Spilliaert, and he mentions the presence there of the soul singer Marvin Gaye who lived there for a while to recover from bad health and in the meantime wrote the classic “Sexual Healing”. “Now”, Henk says smilingly – “we’re not going to perform the song “Sexual Healing” here …” But I for one always thought that the song came pretty close to the sexual undertone of the Gaye song – anyway one of the closest in the whole Nits repertoire – with a very sensual rhythmic movement that inspired me a few times to a little dance too
The opening sequence of this rhythmic, almost ritual dance reminds me each time of a scene from Stanley Kubrick’s movie “Eyes Wide Shut”, the part where Doctor Bill Harford enters the mansion where a secret masked orgy is taking place. A whole atmosphere of mystery, danger, debauchery and amorality is amplified by the musical score with a deep, droning, growling sound which also opens the “Dead Rat Ball” dance. A voluptuous secrecy behind masks. We are led away from the usual Nitsian candour and innocence straight away, into the inscrutability of a world of masks and fêtes galantes, into the world painted by James Ensor and into a world of dark rituals, derision and danger, a world that is not what it seems. With the smell of death penetrating the scenes pictured by Ensor, the skeletons with their mocking grins – Ensor was obsessed with death, he thought it was the only thing that gave meaning to life. The celebrations of carnival bring together all members of society regardless of their social status, even the dead are brought back in their costumes of skeletons; all the barriers between the dead and the living are broken … “Keeping the dead alive…” An unusual setting for a Nits song …
For the duration of a song the musicians of Nits play the perfect hosts for their guests James and Marvin. They procure an ambiance which would suit both guests: as if the music were impersonating a fin-de-siècle sentiment mixed with the sensualism of a sixties soul singer. Nits happily play along in a little masquerade themselves, even offering croquettes de crevettes. Masks become a toy in their world of music chameleons.

Prior to this, in their usual way of candid observers, Nits had of course written the wonderful “Mask” song on the album Adieu Sweet Bahnhof – which is also the name of a ballroom song where our thoughts are taken on a train ride through an inner world of emotions and an outer world of Europeanness. The music of Nits is perfectly “see-through” at first sight, perfectly clear, yet it often harbours multiple personalities and houses many a different character from the present as well as from the past. Their music likes to shape the stage for many a character to tell his or her story; their music likes to dress up as if it were staging a costume party so to speak, each time boasting a different attire. It is commonly said that Nits keep on re-inventing themselves from album to album. But I think it is more subtle than that, there’s more to it than just re-inventing who “Nits” are – that sounds like so general a statement . I think it’s more a case of Nits liking to change character, taking on different musical personalities as if they were actors, taking on a different perspective and adopting a slightly or totally different musical language to tell the story of some new protagonists or of a character we already know but is now in a different stage of life which their music seamlessly likes to adapt to. The music sets the tone, always in a different manner, and creates a scenic construction for the characters to move into. The changeability, the flexibility, the “adaptability” of their music are legendary. And they forever like to invite new guests into their musical universe.

In truth, their music loves to impersonate different musical personas, create settings and decors that breathe a totally new and different atmosphere to invite yet another character. Like making a new play with each album, of life and world, where yet another group of “actors” will appear on the stage: from Sister Rosa and Eric and Seppo, to Joni Mitchell and Georgia O’Keeffe, from grandma to sisters, from Caruso to Tintoretto, from the milkman to the bricklayer, from the tree to the bauhaus chair, from the ivory boy to the panorama man, from the boy in the tree to the ice princess, from Joseph Cornell to Christine … the members of the cast and the figurants are innumerable. And it’s always an honour to be their guest. Each character gets its own musical, dramatic setting. Of course the music comes first most of the time, but it’s always a surprise to see who will fit in the musical story … That’s what makes the music of Nits so much fun, so interesting and entertaining at the same time. It is as if there’s always a new story being told in yet a new musical format. “Sometimes she is Charlie Chaplin – Charlie C. for a while”, “Sometimes she can be a dying tree – I’m a wind-up bird” Henk Hofstede writes in the song “Wind-up Bird”, as if “She” were music herself, the always changing persona of the story. Music the chameleon girl of Nits.

Nits love being “impersonators” and players while telling their own stories or those of others. They exhume a tremendous sense of pleasure when on stage sharing their little plays with the spectators and audiences. This doubleness behind their limpid, candid songs makes them such great entertainers too. There’s always fun to be had and people to meet in their home of music.
Listening to their music, watching them playing on stage, we never get the impression that we’re looking at or listening to a replica. The musical story is always fresh and sincere. Never just a copy of something else. And there is – always – more to it …

The music of Nits is characterised by a sweet directness and a limpid sincerity – quite the opposite of the idea of a mask – yet they like dressing up and playing the story of someone they don’t even know so well or of someone they befriended or admired or even of an animal like a cow with spleen or a bird with one wing. As usual Nits let their imagination run wild, also when it comes to the characters they invite into their world. Nits have many faces and yet they are one and the same. Nits never wear a mask. Their music never has the fixed expression of a mask, nor does it make the storytelling inscrutable. Nits play with bare faces. Instead the masks are Nits’ playthings. I imagine a whole array of masks of characters and real people, of animals, of famous artists and people they know lying around somewhere in the memory of their old studio amidst all the instruments. The musical instruments together with the imaginary masks of figures lying on the floor or hanging on the walls, are the elements from which they pick and choose to assemble yet another musical story 🙂 .

Nits are portraitists and in their work a whole arsenal of faces appear. With or without a mask. That’s for the characters to decide – or the lyricist … The music of Nits offers us fantasy portraits of people in their world. It is often an improvisation of a world where characters appear almost at random – you can never predict whose story will feature on the next album. In the work of Nits world is a play where all the protagonists connect through music and make up one very singular universe that stands out in the world of pop music.
The music as always trying to uncover what’s lying beneath the masks: “I wanna know – What is your face – Show it”… Musical stories revealing their own intuitive truths.

Joke Roelandt, February 2025