{"product_id":"personal-trainer_still-willing_2024_bel","title":"Still Willing","description":"Dutch band Personal Trainer make songs that sound like all your favourite indie rock luminaries, packaged up in gleaming pop psalms. Following their 2022 debut album Big Love Blanket (2022), the band return this year with Still Willing, out on Bella Union.\n\nIf you like your pop music to keep you on your toes, Amsterdam’s Personal Trainer have got you covered with their second album. Essentially the project of Willem Smit (working with co-producer\/collaborator Casper van der Lans) on record and a full band on stage, Personal Trainer showed a knack for indie-pop’s DIY exuberance and experimentation that was fully in tune with 2022’s debut album, Big Love Blanket. Now signed to Bella Union, Willem returns invigorated with Still Willing, a multifaceted record of glittering contrasts and vivid melodies, bursting arrangements and subliminal sounds, playful lyrics and self-reflection: in short, a pop album executed with gusto, brio, and charm.\n\nAs Willem says, it’s a record fuelled by its extremes: at times energetic and raucous, at others quiet and reflective, always full of hidden pleasures. “When I listen to the records I make, what I mostly hope is that every time something happens, you go, 'Wow,'” he says. “I like to be surprised like that on a record, to kind of be thrown around.”\n\nThose surprises start from the off, with ‘Upper Ferntree Gully’, showcasing Personal Trainer’s dreamier side before choppy riffs and electronics take over. All the while, Willem’s imprint is ever-present: he prefers not to dissect his lyrics, but the title’s nod to his mother’s Australian birthplace and her recorded voice at the album’s start instil a spirit of warmth and intimacy into the album – the personal in Personal Trainer, perhaps.\n\nIn a left turn, ‘I Can be Your Personal Trainer’ follows with dynamic impetus. The album continues with this duality in mind, always Smit’s distinct work but always fresh, always searching. According to Willem’s description, ‘Cyan’ is “a weird, happy pop song,” carried by collaborator Nick Bolland’s sax and augmented with vocal contributions from Dutch alt-pop singer Lena Hessels. “With most of this album, I was trying to make myself laugh, or at least smile,” Willem explains. “And then I started to really like it. Somewhere along the way in the process, I found something like honesty or something beautiful in it.”\n\nElsewhere there’s rock in ‘Round’ and vulnerability in ‘New Bad Feeling’. ‘Intangible’ is another gear change, moving from an ascending synth line into propulsive indie-funk-pop, where Willem’s innate melodic instincts lead to uncharted territory for Personal Trainer. As Willem explains, “I tried to make a song that was something I wouldn’t normally do and experiment with it. I like how it turned out, as it’s probably one of the first cases where I started with the chorus and the other parts later, which is rare.”\n\nThe prickly sensibility of ‘Testing the Alarm’ adds amusing wordplay (“lallygag in shrubbery”) before gig-favourite ‘You Better Start Scrubbing’ arrives on the album in a joyously abrasive explosion of no-wave vigour, with its glorious chorus chanted by the voices of three members of Dutch alt-rock quintet The Klittens. Finally, ‘What Am I Supposed to Say about the People and their Ways’ closes the album on a note of irony and humility, Willem arguing for a curious mindset rather than the modern bleating of “know-it-alls”.\n\nWitty, welcoming, and melodic, Still Willing is the sound of an instinctive DIY-pop musician who prizes exploration and intuition over premeditation. Willem’s initial intention was to record the album as if it were live, but he realised that his alchemy with Casper would not be denied. “I felt we had grown and built a language together. We don’t have to say much, but we understand each other well. There was a lot less trial and error than last time because we were so much on the same page.”\n\nAs for how they work together, Willem explains that the songs and sounds are pieced together in detailed stages. “I write the songs and record most of the elements, like a kind of skeleton, and then we record the drums together. That’s the first step, most of the time. From there, we build. I don’t know much about compressors or weird effects. But Casper knows a lot and is very enthusiastic. If I want a part to work better, he’s like, ‘Oh, yeah, I have an idea for that.’ Sometimes I would say, ‘Do you feel like playing this part?’ And he’ll just play it.”\n\nRecorded between home and – as Willem says – “places that are cheap to record in,” the result is a homespun pop album brimming with ideas and colour. While Big Love Blanket’s experimental sounds included a snapping celery stick, Still Willing features floor squeaks, closing doors, and a “no-input mixing.” Besides Hessels and The Klittens, contributing to the recording were drummer Kick Kluiving and (for half the songs) bassist Ruben van Weegberg, also Willem’s bandmate in Canshaker Pi, who counted Stephen Malkmus as a producer. Most of the percussion comes from Kilian Kayser, and the understated sonic flavours are served by Abel Tuinstra and Otto de Jong.\n\nWillem is the epicentre of the band, which grew out of impromptu, exhilarating gigs in which members of various local bands shared a busy stage. The live formation has solidified somewhat, but Willem still relishes the contrast with his recorded work: “When I make a record, it’s my thing. But I can’t tell everyone what to do every second when we’re on stage. There are shakers flying around and instruments being thrown around, and I don’t have the capacity to control that. And that’s very exciting to me.”\n\nBig Love Blanket harnessed this energy into ten exciting, bright, and invigorating pop songs. Acclaim for the band came from Steve Lamacq, Marc Riley, Mojo, Clash, DIY Mag, and others. Supports for BC Camplight in 2023 were joyfully received, as was an Independent Venue Week tour with The Klittens and Real Farmer. Personal Trainer also enjoyed many festival appearances, including End of the Road, Wilderness, and The Great Escape. December 2023 saw an EP of ‘The Feeling’ (nine minutes) and ‘Babyolifantjes’ (baby elephants) released, recorded with the goal of capturing the band’s live form. Soon, Smit and his bandmates will showcase this form at summer festivals such as Green Man, Deershed, Truck Festival, and Lowlands.\n\nIn the meantime, Still Willing is an ardent expression of Willem’s recording and studio methods. It is tied together by inviting pop instincts and rich with the fertile promise of more to come. Willem doesn’t want to tell you what to think about the album but, he says, “It would be great if people liked it and bought the record, so I can make another one.” Going by Still Willing, he’s ready for the long distance.","brand":"Personal Trainer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55306587930968,"sku":null,"price":23980836.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0898\/4943\/0360\/files\/3700187685164_cb712e6d-546e-423b-b3f1-a3346576aba4.jpg?v=1760288516","url":"https:\/\/vinyles.com\/en-us\/products\/personal-trainer_still-willing_2024_bel","provider":"Vinyles.com","version":"1.0","type":"link"}