Amsterdam-based indie rock outfit Personal Trainer have always sounded like a band happily making it up as they go (we labeled 2022’s debut LP Big Love Blanket as different, exciting and unpredictable), but new full-lengther Human Assholes feels particularly liberated. Built around acoustic guitars and recorded largely live in a room together, these fifteen songs (if you also count the 14 seconds of fanfare that opens the album) have a looseness fitting for Willem Smit’s never-ending flow of ideas.

Jangly guitars, woody piano, and nimble bass collide with bursts of scrappy energy and hooks that are probably better thought out than their spontaneous nature suggests. There’s plenty of absurdity again, but the musicians have the guts to unite outbursts and restraint and get away with it, also adding a sense of doubt and vulnerability this time. Yet the new album doesn’t succumb to its own weight; it has the crooked charm of Pavement without ever feeling derivative, turning 50 minutes of mess, melody, and mischief into something that follows its own strange compass.

Human Assholes—engineered and mixed by Casper van der Lans—is out digitally, on CD and vinyl LP, through Bella Union. Featuring Willem Smit (vocals, guitar), Abel Tuinstra (piano, synths), Mart Boumans (guitar, wind instruments), Ruben van Weegberg (bass), and Leon Harms (drums), with Casper van der Lans (guitar), Franti Maresová (guitar, vocals), Marta Arpini (vocals), Otto de Jong (cello), Paul Bestebreurtje (whistle), Pip Blom (vocals), and Susanne Linssen (violin) guesting on select tracks.

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