Personal Trainer are effectively Willem Smit and a rotating cast of others, a collective by any other name that first emerged in 2022 with their critically applauded debut Big Love Blanket. For it’s follow up Smits has given a freer reign to collaborator/producer Casper van der Lans, a decision intended it seems to help make the pop bits poppier and the weird bits….weirder.
This is laudible because in context, Smits version of pop veers between straightforward chops and the avant garde treatments offered by Black Country, New Road and Squid. On Still Willing he sets out his manifesto early, opener Upper Ferntree Gully veering from a dream filled ambient beginning to raw, screeching distortion in it’s near eight minutes.
In form the intent is to mirror the band’s free wheeling live shows, but there’s also a wide streak of Pavement-esque slacker rock to be heard, especially on the aptly titled Fuzz. There are some more recognisable sounding grooves too in the fine indie disco of Intangible and Better Start Scrubbing, but it’s the uncompromising Testing The Alarm that will probably steer your decision on Still Willing in one direction or another.
You can read a full review here.
The Voice Of Unreason 