Twee Vignettes of Eggs and Unicycles
The Chamber Pop/Indie Rock sound has had a huge revival in recent years. Inspired by the dense, layered orchestrations of The Beach Boys and Phil Specter, acts like Arcade Fire and Sufjan Stevens brought those sounds into the indie rock zeitgeist around the turn of the century, crafting a sonic architecture that manages to be both massive and quaint at the same time. 15 years later, acts like Black Country, New Road and Racing Mount Pleasant have breathed new life and excitement into this genre, bringing acoustic instruments back to the forefront of indie rock.
With the new release of their third album, Human Assholes, indie rock collective Personal Trainer is the Netherlands’ answer to this revitalized sound. Fronted by singer and guitarist Willem Smit, the band is an eclectic, rotating cast of members and contributors across numerous instruments, from the traditional rock band instrumentation of guitar, bass and drums, to violins, cellos, and a variety of wind instruments that make up the sonic halo that surrounds Smit’s acoustic guitar and vocals.
Where the band really carves its own signature is with Smit’s lyrics. There’s a really simplistic but colorful vibe to his writing, with nature motifs and surrealistic metaphors in his writing. An excerpt of “The Burrows” reads “Please let me digress from who I am, from what I have; Hold my breath and turn into a unicycle.” Other such charming visuals trademark the album, from pigs on “Moping” to eggs on “Scrambled Egg”, Smit takes on these cute vignettes of distinct characters a couple lines at a time. The style feels almost Wes Anderson in this way; this album could easily soundtrack a movie like The Fantastic Mr. Fox.
The album’s track listing is well orchestrated, with several short instrumental tracks helping to keep the album moving. Each track uses the same melodic motif, which can be heard scattered across the rest of the album, but performs it in different ways. The first two instrumentals (tracks 1 and 6) have the band performing the piece in different subsets of instruments, with an assortment of horns on “Martin’s Curtain Up”, and guitar and piano on “Places!” The third instrumental track “Rim Shot/Event Horizon” is performed on a single instrument, but has been given the Aphex Twin treatment and distorted and manipulated to an inch of its life. What instrument it may have been has been lost to the process here, and the creative choice demonstrates that the band pulls influence from any possible direction; the eclectic sound presents listeners with a lot to love.
With the increased popularity of this sound, one could expect to see a substantial rise in popularity in the coming years. The band has a strong offering musically, and they already find themselves touring extensively across Europe. The best time to become a fan of this band is today, because in a few years, you can tell people you liked them before they blew up.
