Meeting at Vassar College and quickly bonding over a mutual love of academia and Alanis Morissette, Molly Buckley (guitar/vocals), Melina Harris (guitar/vocals) and Alix Masters (bass/vocals) decided to form garage pop outfit Personal Trainer. So far there’s only one single to go on, ‘Backyard’, released via the New York label House of Feelings, but it is more than enough to ramp up the expectations and position Personal Trainer as a band to watch over the coming months.
Because ‘Backyard’ is far from an introductory demo. Creeping into life with an intimate hush, the song is shot through with a sense of momentum that overflows intermittently, allowing Personal Trainer to offer sincere reserve and empowering energy within the same four minutes without any sense of contradiction. This push and pull between pressing forward and holding back is relevant right down to the core themes too, hesitancy and confidence battling for the upper hand.
The track’s origins are something of a story within a story. The band recall an experience at a basement party on New Year’s Eve, where someone recounted the time they were invited to get high with the popular girls. Feeling ostracised and heartbroken after a failed relationship, and one of the only openly gay girls in school, they were worried about what these straight girls might say or do, but reality was far more welcoming. “Inside popular-girl’s-dad’s toolshed, somewhere in South Jersey […] they let her know that it’s going to be okay. ‘Your ex was a bitch, anyway,'” they tell her.
At the NYE party all those years later, the woman is still visibly moved by this act of kindness, breaking as it did the expectations and conventions of the time. As though in one brief, teenage, incandescent moment, one’s entire life could be changed. As though you were allowed to be yourself after all.
However, far from being a simple celebration of freedom and possibility, Personal Trainer take this idea into far more conflicted waters. Because with the relief comes a second, no less powerful emotion. A sense of regret, a mourning for all of loves lost in the past. Those people we were too afraid to speak to openly, those moments we did not think were ours to share.
How many chances did we miss to truly love those whom we admired? How many times did we hurt someone because we were too scared to tell the truth? ‘Backyard’ is for anyone who cares to reimagine what their childhood may have looked like had they been unafraid to love honestly. And for all of us who are still figuring out who we love and how to love them without fear, without compromise.
Photo by Ellen Giddings