Personal Trainer Spiral on "Moping" Single + Video | 'Human Assholes' LP out 9/4 via Bella Union

Personal Trainer Spiral With New Single + Video: "Moping" Human Assholes LP out September 4 via Bella Union Human Assholes album pre-order link “ripe with casually confident songwriting that bursts with spirit and enthusiasm.” – Pitchfork “a woozily woven, delightfully absurd tapestry.” – UPROXX “‘Punch Drunk Love’ takes on a mellower energy, injecting bits of jangly guitars and woody pianos before gliding into a resonant, plucky upright bass solo.” – The Needle Drop Singles: “Punch Drunk Love” “Moping”

Credit: Sophie Koterus Korting  Dutch collective Personal Trainer will release their new album Human Assholes on September 4 via Bella Union. Already garnering support from The Needle Drop to Under The Radar, the 15-track opus is the follow-up to the band’s critically acclaimed 2024 album Still Willing. Today, the band reveals second album preview track “Moping” alongside alongside a suitably entertaining video directed by and starring Personal Trainer frontman Willem Smit. The song figuratively and literally circles around the experience of being a musician and getting stuck inside your own loop a little bit. “The song keeps circling back on itself lyrically and musically,” explains frontman and songwriter Willem Smit. “The chorus uses this Pixies trick of looping three bars of 4/4 instead of four, so the loop never fully settles. It creates this automatic forward motion that feels exciting to me without sounding too ‘look how clever this is’. That looping feeling is reinforced by all the self-reference in the lyrics too - almost like a kind of navel-gazy meta glitch. I was listening to a lot of Callahan & Witscher, as well as They Might Be Giants - they influenced the song pretty directly.”   Watch / Share: “Moping” video 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, including a performance at London’s Scala. All dates are listed here.   Website | Instagram | X | Facebook | YouTube Apple Music | Spotify | Bandcamp