Still Willing

Both playful and thoughtfully bittersweet, Personal Trainer's take on indie pop/rock is the brainchild of Amsterdam musician Willem Smit. With a sound injected with arty post-punk, piano pop, Britpop, singer/songwriter introspection, and more, the band made their full-length debut with Big Love Blanket in 2022. Releases including 2024's Still Willing continued along thematically searching lines.

A member of Amsterdam alternative outfit Canshaker Pi, Willem Smit started Personal Trainer as a solo project in the mid-2010s. Early singles like 2016's "As the Monument Falls" and "Beautiful Money" were hazy self-recorded experiments that were followed by a handful of collaborations with Casper Van Der Lans. By 2019, a more clarified, tuneful approach had emerged; the vinyl 7" "Total Wotal" (2019) was a Paradiso Vinyl Club entry recorded by Smit and drummer Kick Kluiving and mastered by Mikey Young. The project went on to issue singles on Holm Front and Subroutine Records while gradually expanding its lineup. Personal Trainer's debut album, Big Love Blanket, appeared on The Industry label in February 2022 and featured Smit on vocals and Kluiving on drums, along with Abel Tuinstra (keyboards, samples, trombone), Franti Maresova (guitar), Leon Harms (guitar), Ruben Van Weegberg (bass), and Kilian Kayser (percussion). The same lineup turned up a year later on the studio performance Live at Katzwijm, and an extremely limited Idiotape Records cassette, Do It Eventually, captured the band live in Paris on November 16, 2022.

Personal Trainer signed with esteemed U.K. independent label Bella Union for their sophomore LP. Recorded with Smit, Kluiving, Tuinstra, Van Weegberg, Kayser, and multi-instrumentalist Otto De Jong, and still offering a mix of off-center effervescence and contemplation, Still Willing saw release in August 2024. It featured contributions from Lena Hessels and the Klittens. ~ Marcy Donelson