Personal Trainer / Silver Synthetic 05/05/22 @ Hyde Park Book Club

Personal Trainer is a rock collective around singer/songwriter Willem Smit. Live, they have an ever-shifting line-up with members from bands like Canshaker Pi, Pip Blom, Bull, Steve French, The Klittens, Home Counties and many more. Personal Trainer balances between a spontaneous and fun interaction between musicians being thrown together on a stage without having rehearsed too much, and playing well composed catchy and noisy pop songs with a rock attitude. They were described as “a manic indie rock orchestra that taps into the wayward spirits of Car Seat Headrest, Silver Jews, The Fall and LCD Soundsystem, with Smit playing the role of everyman poet and ringmaster” and “Perfectly organized chaos.”

 

On record, Personal Trainer is a collaboration between Willem Smit, who records and writes most of the music at home, and producer Casper van der Lans (responsible for the production of some of The Netherlands’ greatest releases of the last couple of years, like The Homesick’s The Big Exercise, Petersburg’s Show), who helps Willem refine the productions and mixes.

 

In May 2019 they put out their first 7-inch “The Lazer / Stormchaser Of The Month” on Sports Team’s label Holm Front, followed by a second one “Total Total / You Better Start Scrubbing” on Paradiso Vinyl Club in September. They joined Pip Blom on their Europe/UK tour and in May 2020 they put out their third 7-inch “Edible Plastic / Issue Box / The Industry” on Dutch quality label Subroutine Records. Their first EP “Gazebo” was released by Holm Front February 2020.

 

During the pandemic 2021 personal trainer set out to be the first band to play for 24 hours straight and the first band to ever play two shows at the same time. They played a 24 hour show at Paradiso, but the latter had to be cancelled due to covid restrictions.

 

In the midst of the thick New Orleans summer of 2017, Chris Lyons of garage punks Bottomfeeders found himself sitting on a small batch of songs that didn’t quite fit the fuzzed-out pileups of that band. The new songs were more chiming, driving but relaxed, full of little corners begging to be filled with classic pop harmonies and wayward country licks. He called in his trusted confidants: Bottomfeeders drummer and longtime musical partner Lucas Bogner—the two started playing music together at the tender age of 15—plus bassist Pete Campanelli, and Kunal Prakash (Jeff the Brotherhood) dug the songs and signed on, and the quartet started playing in earnest, hunkering down in the practice space.

 

By the time the band played its first gig in late 2018 at the opening of Nola’s ManRay Records, the songs had multiplied and the members of the newly christened Silver Synthetic had become genuine rock & roll craftsmen. In a world that doesn’t seem capable of swaying, Silver Synthetic’s self-titled debut shakes and boogies.

 

It makes sense that the band’s first gig was in a record shop ‘cause folks, this is record nerd-core in a major way, evocative of the LP's first golden era, as the late sixties oozed into the strange 1970s, with the requisite T-Rex stomps, Britfolk twists and turns, and dueling Verlaine/Lloyd guitars. It’s about warmth, and you can practically smell the gently glowing amp tubes on “In the Beginning,” which wafts along on a gust borrowed from Lou Reed’s beatific Coney Island Baby breeziness. With “Chasm Killer,” the boys lean into jammy heartland rock, almost approaching Silver Bullet Band territory at one point! Even when the band kicks into charging lean rock-n-roller, like on the Kinksy “Around the Bend,” there’s a laid-backness that allows more room for the spirit.

 

You could call Silver Synthetic rock & roll formalists, but the truth is they're more like minimalists, stripping away tired clutter and unnecessary bloat and just zooming in on the essential.