Artist
IMAGES: To download, click above. Photo credit to A. KLASS
LINKS:
House of Feelings
Instagram
Twitter
Personal Trainer
I’m the star of my own freak show: Personal Trainer’s new EP What Was There Before?
You feel small when you hit the bottom of your world
Laying on a soft rug on a lonely afternoon, yellow warm sun, salty fresh tears, soft belly aches. Old stories papering the ceiling, the new knowing that there is no shame here anymore. Some sorrow, yes: the nostalgia of memories you wouldn’t change. Pink bright new love, gray blue dissonant regret, the lime green certainty of our ability to press through the concrete, to bloom anyway. Effervescent & gritty stories, pouring out into a cool fountain of universal experience for us to float in. Melodies which hold our rage and salve our wounds, releasing us stronger than before.
The air was hot and heavy / I should have kissed you on the mouth
Personal Trainer’s new EP What Was There Before? ushers us into a land painted with colors of our past selves, rife with old dreams and ancient heartbreaks. Dreamy, hopeful, and deeply honest, What Was There Before? is unique and expansively universal in its vulnerability and storytelling.
I left before spring could / Color me into a romantic / If I can’t please you then I panic
Initially meeting at Vassar College, bonding over a shared love of Alanis Morissette, the Personal Trainer trio officially formed their band in 2017 in Brooklyn. They released their first single “Backyard” in 2020 leading Nylon Magazine to call them a “new favorite in the making.”
Born in a Los Angeles recording studio, What Was There Before? is a love letter to all we were, and all we are, and all we one day will be. It is a work of deep passion, seeing Mel Harris (they/them) (Guitar & Vocals), Molly Buckley (she/they) (Guitar/Keys & Vocals), and Alix Masters (she/her) (Bass & Vocals) through business, law, and medical schools, respectively.
Till the dark is home
Bubbling till doomsday, longing for the surface, haunting the spray, Personal Trainer’s What Was There Before? leaves us longing for worlds past lost, for selves never actualized, for dreams we know our hands had a part in tearing to pieces. And yet with gentle power, with a kind sort of knowing, with deep honesty, we are guided back. Enriched with an understanding we have always held bone deep: that our own wonder and our hope are too sure-bright to deny.