Personal Trainer have shared ‘Tyres Skid’, a bruised but strangely buoyant new single from their forthcoming album Human Assholes, out September 4 via Bella Union.
Opening with a crash before settling into something considerably more melancholy, ‘Tyres Skid’ finds Willem Smit staring at the wreckage of a relationship and wondering whether everything has changed or simply got worse. The heartbreak is deliberately oversized, culminating in one of the closest things Personal Trainer have written to a full-throated sing-along chorus.
“Tyres Skid could be a break up song,” Smit says. “The ‘I’ finds themselves in a world where everything seems to have changed, or maybe just gotten worse.” Smit considered naming the entire album after the track, alongside such excellent alternatives as My Humongous Broken Heart and Something’s Wrong With My Guitar.
“I feel like the song takes the theme of heartbreak that runs through the record, amps it up into this cliché, and boils it down to one bombastic but genuine gesture,” he explains.
And then comes perhaps the best description of ‘Tyres Skid’ imaginable: “Singing it live makes me feel like Bono: rich and famous.”
‘Tyres Skid’ follows ‘Punch Drunk Love’, ‘Moping’ and ‘Hole’ in previewing Human Assholes, the 15-track follow-up to 2024’s Still Willing. This time Personal Trainer have shifted away from assembling songs behind a screen, instead writing together in a room and using acoustic guitar as a starting point.
But ‘Tyres Skid’ is the one currently demanding attention: heartbreak, a disobedient car and a chorus big enough to briefly turn Willem Smit into Bono. What more do you need?
