PATOIS COUNSELORS - The Optimal Seat LP

Highly recommended.

Fuses elements of classic-era The Fall with Pere Ubu or others of that ilk from the Cleveland / Columbus area.

On Ever/Never, we'll have a massive restock of the label soon!

"Patois Counselors debut was my favorite LP of 2018, so when this follow-up dropped with no forewarning, I nearly choked on my kombucha! This band is truly weird: they’ve got like eight members but sound like a band with four members, they’re from Nth Carolina for chrissakes, and they offer a direct and biting commentary on our present bewildering hellscape existence in a way that feels oddly nice, delivered via funky and catchy post-punk music. They somehow also sound cordial the whole time, as if they are fully acknowledging our pitiful state of affairs but carry no rage or animosity towards it… they paint a picture with vivid details and leave it up to us to evaluate. To be frank, I didn’t expect the ‘Counselors to top their debut album, and I don’t think they did, but that doesn’t mean The Optimal Seat has spent much time off my turntable since it first arrived. Their sonic formula ultimately remains the same, if perhaps a little more traditional in an “indie post-punk” sorta way this time around – drums and bass dig into danceable-yet-oblique patterns, vocalist and bandleader Bo White sings/raps/speaks his words, and the guitars/keys/bleeps/bloops generally defer to everything else, providing these songs with room to groove. White’s voice still rings with an enunciation undeniably similar to Parquet Courts’s A. Savage, and the music (warm-welcoming funky post-punk) shares similar strands of sonic DNA, but I don’t smell the slightest hint of biting at play here; it seems more like two thoughtful and art-minded musicians who reached similar conclusions with similar throats, independent of each other. Call me decadent, but I’m going to continue enjoying the hell out of both!" - YGR