Patois Counselors

Patois Counselors

Limited Sphere

Ever / Never

***As Patois Counselors close in on a decade of existence, they are back to confirm their standing as one of America’s most consistently forward-thinking rock units. Although it’s been an entire presidential term since the Counselors acclaimed sophomore album The Optimal Seat came out, Bo White’s group hasn’t been lying fallow. Over the last few years, the seven-person line-up has been busy writing, recording and gigging, resulting in Enough: One Night at the Daisy Chain, a live-in-the-studio document captured in Brooklyn while on tour. Released at the beginning of 2024, Daisy Chain works splendidly as both a greatest hits primer and a forthcoming album teaser. Alas, the teasing is over with the arrival of Limited Sphere, the third album from Charlotte, NC’s Patois Counselors. Once again, Ever/Never steps up to the plate to demonstrate their confidence in this hard-working crew. In most contexts, a septet band configuration signals either a jazz ensemble or a mishmash of madcap noise. Beholden to no rules, Patois Counselors pluck from a selection of tactics as needed. Even augmented by extra players, each member reinforces their specific role, performing exactly what is needed for the track at hand. White’s post-modern muse needs plenty of room to stretch out and breathe and the big band spreads out the tent as far as it will go. White’s songs are rife with earned skepticism, sly asides and deft twists of tongues and licks. The manner in which the little details accumulate into the structure of the whole keeps...

Patois Counselors

Enough: One Night at the Daisy Chain

Ever / Never

***Coming up on a decade as one of the country’s premier post-punk units, Patois Counselors show no sign of slowing down. In advance of its third album Limited Sphere, Patois Counselors drop One Night at the Daisy Chain to whet the appetites of those who crave only the finest in tense tunesmithery. Led by Bo White, the Counselors have swelled to a sextet; but for a band of this size, the music remains stripped of excess and White’s songs are given ample room to shine. As this session demonstrates, Bo writes some absolute gems. Recorded and mixed by Ian Rose at the Daisy Chain in Brooklyn, One Night captures the band in the midst of a short tour, firing on all cylinders, taking no prisoners and laughing all the way to the (blood) bank. One Night at the Daisy Chain functions as both a career retrospective and a teaser for the forthcoming LP. Highlights from PC’s previous albums (Proper Release / The Optimal Seat) get another lease on life as the band breathes fresh air into tracks like “Modern Station,” “Repeat Offender” and “The Galvanizer.” If new cuts like “Ranking Set,” “What’s The News” and “Fountain of UHF” are any indication, Limited Sphere will complete Patois Counselors’ hat trick of stellar full-lengths.

Patois Counselors

The Optimal Seat

Ever / Never

***The world may have shifted in significant ways since 2018, but Patois Counselors remain one of the finest bands plying their trade since Proper Release, their debut album, was lavished with all manner of year-end praise from such respected sources as YellowGreenRed and the Bandcamp editorial staff. Recording once again for Ever/Never Records, The Optimal Seat doesn’t alter the formula, but throws enough curveballs at the listener to keep them on their toes. Patois Counselors are specialists, and their expertise lies in the ability to craft a perfect nervous hook, to sculpt their anxious music into addictive hybrids of post-punk pop. Patois Counselors songs overflow with so many winning ideas that it can be easy to gloss over just how succinct and satisfying the end result is. Following that logic, The Optimal Seat is a proper release that delivers what an album once promised—twelve songs of tense songcraft stuffed with enough flavor to keep your lips smacking, and your fingers snapping, long into the night.  Head Counselor Bo White leads his band through a tangle of needling guitar lines, deft rhythms and adroit synthesizer flourishes like a wellseasoned vet. All of these elements are present and accounted for in the confident kicker “Realities/Series Of Viceroys.” “Don’t Stop The Rattle” flirts with the anthemic while establishing the push-pull dynamics of Patois Counselors. Alternating frantic verses with moments of lucidity, “Probably No One” highlights a compelling undertow that continues throughout the album. “Let Beauty Be” effortlessly executes the kind of rousing...

Patois Counselors

Proper Release

Ever / Never

***BACK IN STOCK!!!  Here we have it. PATOIS COUNSELORS and their debut album Proper Release. Eleven slashes, eleven perfectly nervous trips to the well. And this North Carolinian band has landed in a welcoming hangar—New York City’s always-adventurous Ever/Never Records. It is readily apparent from lead-off cut “Disconnect Notice” that Patois Counselors bends towards the arch of Pere Ubu’s storied catalog, but instead of tripping on cracked street waves, they are on their front porch watching the sunset with a lukewarm beer clutched tight and wondering, “What next?” No Cleveland junk sunset for Patois Counselors, there’s a different kind of graveyard haunting these woods. Patois Counselors have given us an embarrassment of riches for a confederacy of dunces. The album title comes off as ironic maybe even a hint of the erotic, but to interpret any manner of cynical bluff into PC’s full frontal attack is to admit a lack of imagination on the listener. Don’t let Patois Counselors’ easy Southern charm distract you from the detailed, focused intensity of its sound. Guitars buzz and clang in queasy unison, synths channel inherently melodic cicada hum, many of the songs containing noisy interludes streaked with melody. “Last Heat” vacillates menacingly, as “Get Excitement” slinks around with the pent-up humid sway of deep summer. “Repeat Offender” smacks you back awake with rapidfire Devo moves and yet another chorus to write home about. “Making Appts” takes those sideways electronics steps that Parquet Courts occasionally indulges in and teaches it the proper...