Personal Trainer – Punch Drunk Love
Amsterdam collective Personal Trainer, the project orbiting frontman and songwriter Willem Smit, have announced Human Assholes, their third album, due September 4 via Bella Union. It follows 2024’s Still Willing and arrives with lead single “Punch Drunk Love”, a title borrowed from the Paul Thomas Anderson film. The video was directed by Thomas William Foster.
For Human Assholes, Smit and co-producer Casper van der Lans moved away from the laptop-driven process of earlier records and made acoustic guitar the starting point, writing in a room with the full band and tracking live across six days. “Punch Drunk Love” is the first look at what that sounds like: jangly guitar, a woody piano, an upright bass that opens up toward the middle, Smit’s vocals calm and close throughout.
Susanne Linssen of Hospital Bombers and former member Franti Maresova both appear on the track. Smit describes the song as coming from “a very strong feeling of being in love, or at least being infatuated by someone, which can then lead to obsession.” The arrangement stays loose and never pushes the emotional weight too hard, which is undoubtedly why it lands: the tension between warmth and compulsion is in the lyric, not the production.
Human Assholes is out September 4 via Bella Union.
Tour Dates Europe:
- July 17 – Knokke-Heist, BE @ Kneistival
- July 25 – Balen, BE @ Rock Olmen
- Aug 27–30 – Oost-Vlieland, NL @ Into The Great Wide Open
- Sept 12 – Merksplas, BE @ Backyard Festival
- Sept 18 – Amsterdam, NL @ Carré
- Oct 20 – London, UK @ Scala
- Oct 22 – Manchester, UK @ Band on the Wall
- Oct 23 – St Davids, UK @ Boia Festival
- Oct 24 – Bristol, UK @ Thekla
- Oct 27 – Bruges, BE @ Cactus Club
- Oct 28 – Antwerp, BE @ Trix
- Oct 29 – Hasselt, BE @ Club AFF
