The inevitable question arising from reading this title is, “who are the human assholes?” There are plenty of candidates. Is it anyone specific, the entire human race or Willem Smit, the band’s frontman and songwriter, accusing himself? Anyone familiar with Personal Trainer’s oeuvre thus far will not expect any definitive answers to be forthcoming as they are not a band associated with nihilistic, anarcho-punk barrages aimed at the system or high-flying baddies. As indicated by Smit being tempted to call earlier albums ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and ‘Harry Potter & The Lord of the Rings’, there is a sense of the playfully absurd to his writing often shrouded in mischief and wry observation that serves to mask vulnerability. However, the title track does see Smit admitting “I’m an asshole”, then instantly adding “you’re an asshole” in a song that hints at malfunctioning relationships. The tune has an unusually restrained groove with plentiful embellishment from wonky synths and a variety of woodwind garnishes.
The titular song is indicative of how ‘Human Assholes’ differs from the previous pair of Personal Trainer albums. A major change this time is the use of acoustic guitar as the starting point for the music. In addition, the songs were penned in a physical room with the band rather than Smit cutting and pasting elements behind a screen. This admission was somewhat of a surprise as Personal Trainer has gained a reputation as one of the best bands on the gig circuit and their first two albums have been imbued with a vibrant, apparently live sound. Yet, typical of the contradictions surrounding them, this new album is their most sprawling, complex and least immediate over the course of fifteen tracks, three of which are snippets lasting less than half a minute each.
After the 15 seconds of instrumental chaos that is ‘Marvin’s Curtain Up’, the first conventional song is ‘Scrambled Egg’. Smit is in apologetic mood, sorry for waking up his lover. Structurally, the song is rhythmically complex while the guitars shift from noodling to emphatic and the arrival of keyboards lend it a symphonic weight. It fits a prog song’s tempo changes and mood shifts into three minutes while maintaining Smit’s fascination with egg imagery – his recent album with Pip Blom as Long Fling had a fried egg adorning its cover. Taking its title from the Paul Thomas Anderson film, ‘Punch Drunk Love’ is a tale of a person obsessing over someone they do not really know well. The music captures the sadness of that one-sided fixation through a finger-picky style that marries a bass and piano, snatches of violin and a flute melody.
There is a Pixies-like quality to ‘Bone’, especially its bassline and the switching between its title and the word “gravestone” before throwing in some piano and synth flourishes later. Maintaining their influence, by Smit’s own admission ‘Moping’ uses a Pixies trick of using three bars of 4/4 instead of four so that the loop never settles. What results is a song with an impressive sense of momentum and excitement, as well as containing a reference to human assholes.
‘The Burrows’ is indicative of their surfeit of ambition. From beginning as a minimal alt-country song, it twists and turns throwing in whistling, piano, weaving woodwind, a choir of voices and particularly cryptic lyrics such as “hold my breath / and turn into a unicycle.” A sense of profound chaos imbues ‘Hole’, a tune which Smit envisaged as the owls from the movie ‘Rango’ playing an up-tempo song. The rhythm is crazed, the main guitar line a sunny Afro pop delight, although there is a brief play as many notes as possible guitar solo and a lyric with a rare for Personal Trainer moral about looking after each other.
There are numerous neat touches. The addition of woodwind gives ‘Tempo’ a Temperance Seven style swing, although there is also a section where all the instruments drop out leaving a distant sounding Smit giving off an air of desperation. On ‘Object Permanence’ which sets of as indie folk, then picks up dynamism, the instruments drop out to be left with barely discernible electronics before slow grindcore guitars crash back in.
Beginning like The E Street Band playing ‘Don’t You Forget About Me’, ‘Tyres Skid’ finds Smit getting meta in reference to musical issues that might serve as a metaphor for life problems (“Something’s wrong with my guitar / it just doesn’t hit the spot / when I play an open G / dread comes over me / something’s off about the way the strings ring out.”) Similar imagery appears on the record’s closing track, ‘Letter from a Scentless Realm’, whose title is a reference to Smit being born without a sense of smell. Here he sings of being “like a broken string in the middle of a song / and the song is about half a lifetime long / and I wonder whether it will ever reach a coda”, suggesting how an accumulation of small setbacks gradually break a person. Unlike some of the more outré moments that have gone before, the song builds on an accumulation of smaller changes and developments and is all the better for it.
A line in ‘Letter from a Scentless Realm’ about balancing an egg on a spoon between his teeth behind a blindfold gives ‘Human Assholes’ its cover artwork. Personal Trainer retain the tangled contradictions and surrealism of an egg. While this new release does not have the level of chaotically messy big tunes that made ‘Big Love Blanket’ one of the 2020’s most thrilling debuts, it has a layered complexity which gradually reveal some great pop moments amid the competing ideas. It is the sound of a band still endlessly exploring possibilities.
Personal Trainer: Human Assholes – Out 4 September 2026 (Bella Union)
I was editor of the long-running fanzine, Plane Truth, and have subsequently written for a number of publications. While the zine was known for championing the most angular independent sounds, performing in recent years with a community samba percussion band helped to broaden my tastes so that in 2021 I am far more likely to be celebrating an eclectic mix of sounds and enthusing about Made Kuti, Anthony Joseph, Little Simz and the Soul Jazz Cuban compilations as well as Pom Poko and Richard Dawson.
