Personal Trainer
Still Willing
Bella Union
Trying to keep up with Amsterdam’s Personal Trainer could prove exhausting. Overflowing with intriguing DIY brainstorms, much like its predecessor, 2022’s inventive and engaging debut Big Love Blanket, Still Willing is a delightful puzzle of divergent, experimental pop whimsy and euphoria, but it’s a lot to absorb at once. Take a breath before going back for more, as it not so subtly demands.
Though it feels as if it’s made of a thousand disparate pieces, Still Willing — designed by imaginative project manager Willem Smit in collaboration with producer Casper van der Lans — is organized, colorful chaos, changing directions in the most agile, well-plotted, and unpredictably amusing ways. And yet, Personal Trainer doesn’t always rely on smoke and mirrors to perform its magic. Still lighthearted and quirky, the sweet, upbeat charm of a rushing “Round” and an urgent, tense “You Better Start Scrubbing” suggest a more straightforward approach to pleasing songcraft, even with the latter’s clamorous, dizzying exhortations and shouting, distorted crackle and crunch, and brief showers of electronic confetti. And the shuffling folk-pop buoyancy of an amiable “I Can be Your Personal Trainer” is certainly endearing in its simplicity. There’s nothing up their sleeves, or is there?
Smit and van der Lans just can’t help themselves, playfully going in and out unseen through backdoors, hiding caches of sounds, and sliding down obscure rabbit holes to keep from getting caught at being unoriginal. On the other hand, they leave easily accessible trails of breadcrumbs to follow. “Upper Ferntree Gully” opens a universe of disparate possibilities, from plucking baritone guitar callbacks to Pinback and noisy Sonic Youth-style squalls, to growling, metallic riffs, beautifully blended vocals, and twinkling respites, but a recording of Smit’s mom’s comforting chattiness is like a warm, down-to-earth smile. What sometimes start out as sensitive ballads transform into fitful, gnarly anthems, like the closer “What Am I Supposed to Say About the People and Their Ways?” Meanwhile, the slippery electro-funk of “Intangible” sounds danceable, tight, and modern, and couldn’t be more irresistible to the masses, and with a sunny bounce in its otherwise wistful step, “Cyan” and its bright, anarchic horns are as theatrical as Sufjan Stevens on his best day.
As animated, raw, and excitable as Jeff Rosenstock’s communal Post-, Personal Trainer’s latest seems as if it was conceived in a garage, like some new technological wonder, but it ought to exist in a contemporary art museum. There are dynamic abstractions and epics here, but none so complicated that they get in the way of unguarded, even slightly sad, lyrics that are often funny and relatable, if often enigmatic. Let’s get fit with Personal Trainer.
