Personal Trainer are back with a brand new single, ‘What’s Left’. Again released via House of Feelings, the song builds upon the debut, channeling a sweet and sour punk that’s both playful and caustic. If ‘Backyard’ was a steady build towards the catharsis of the climax, then ‘What’s Left?’ finds a confident energy from the off. The result is like being air-dropped into a slumber party of best friends who, having barricaded themselves off from the outside world, have drawn up their own rules and codes on how to live. A space of openness and trust that allows an advance beyond conventions. A place to truly become yourself.

Which is not to say there is no uncertainty in the themes, but that the track serves as a tool of interrogation rather than confusion. “What is the difference between romantic and platonic partnership?” the band ask. “Between love and lust?” These concepts are not interchangable but often portrayed as intrinsically linked, something Personal Trainer set out to challenge. “We are told that true intimacy only exists if coupled with a youthful eroticism,” the band continue. “Simply put, attraction = love. And that when the lust fades, love has been lost. But is that true?”

‘What’s Left?’ attempts to answer the question in its title. To find out what remains once the busted flush of traditional wisdom around love and intimacy is burned to the ground. Perhaps autonomy could be found amid the ruins, and something healthier and more fulfilling can began to germinate from the ashes. “We know lust fades,” they conclude, “but we also know that pleasure doesn’t have to. Personal Trainer sees the rediscovery of pleasure as a radical act of resistance against the male gaze.”

‘What’s Left’ is out now on House of Feelings.

Photo by Lauren Moetell

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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

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