Personal Trainer Crash Into New Single “Tyres Skid”
Dutch collective Personal Trainer will release their new album Human Assholes on September 4 via Bella Union. Already garnering support from The Needle Drop, Under The Radar, Atwood Magazine, Northern Transmissions, Ghettoblaster Magazine and more, the 15-track opus is the follow-up to the band’s critically acclaimed 2024 album Still Willing. Opening with a crash, the band reveals the gleaming, melancholy new single “Tyres Skid”.
Frontman and songwriter Willem Smit shares:
“Tyres Skid could be a break up song. Or at least, the “I” finds themselves in a world where everything seems to have changed, or maybe just gotten worse.
I’m pretty happy with the lyrics, which doesn’t happen very often. If I hadn’t decided to call the record Human Assholes, it probably would have been called “Tyres Skid”, or “Is It Me, Or Have We Lost A Couple Of Stars?” or “Something’s Wrong With My Guitar,” or “My Disobedient Car,” or “My Humongous Broken Heart.” I feel like the song takes the theme of heartbreak that runs through the record, amps it up into this cliché, and boils it down to one bombastic but genuine gesture.
It’s the closest a Personal Trainer song has come to the kind of sing-along chorus that I would sing along to. Plus, singing it live makes me feel like Bono: rich and famous.”
There’s this funny Dutch phrase that goes “mijn ei kwijt kunnen”, which quite clumsily translates to “unloading my egg”; it more or less means having an environment or activity where all your feelings, creativity and energy can unshackle as you see fit. For the past 10 years, Willem Smit’s eggs found their baskets within Personal Trainer, the restlessly creative Dutch indie rock stalwarts who have gradually risen up from Amsterdam’s grassroots scenes to touring the world as part of the roster of UK label Bella Union.
Three years of non-stop touring brought Personal Trainer to a freeing realization: no song is ever final, and no show is ever the last. One of the bigger decisions for Human Assholes was to make the acoustic guitar the starting point. And even more importantly, pen the songs in a physical room with the rest of the band instead of cutting and pasting stuff behind a screen. It is the magic of a shared creative experience, including the accidents and breakthroughs along the way, that bring Human Assholes to life.
Personal Trainer have UK & EU headline shows and festival appearances this Summer and Autumn. All dates are listed here.
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