The Convenience Find a New Spark
It’s hot across the southeast. Hell, it’s hot everywhere – and it’s not just the weather.
Tensions are heightened, boiling points have been reached – what is there to do in our highly combustible world at the moment than sit, sweat, and talk shit?
Hailing from the Big Easy, with its reputation for joi de vivre and laidback resilience, doesn’t shield The Convenience from the meteorological and metaphorical swelter – spend anytime in New Orleans this time of year, and you know how the humidity hangs on everything like molten gravity.
On their sophomore album, Like Cartoon Vampires, Nick Corson and Duncan Troast seem to wield that heat: the 13 songs here are a dynamic collection of spontaneous flickers, loose lava lamp grooves, and one 10-minute uncontrolled white hot meltdown.
That’s a pretty significant vibe shift from the duo’s debut, 2021’s Accelerator, a fizzy funk album that aimed for swinging hips and chintzy 80’s synth Prince used all over 1999.
Vampires, by comparison, is more unpredictable. It broods rather than struts – but mostly, it rocks. My hope is that this promising reinvention doesn’t get tagged and lost as yet another post-punk album in a decade absolutely rife with them thus far.
Sure, “Target Offer,” “Waiting for a Train,” and “Western Pepsi Cola Town” could fit seamlessly in a mix featuring Parquet Courts or Fontaines D.C. That’s not a knock on those songs at all, but the riskiest material on Vampires is easily the best.
The Convenience (photo by Daniela Leal)
The duo recorded Vampires themselves in their NOLA practice space, building the songs by jamming on guitars until something sparked. That sense of no-holds-barred creative freedom keeps the album fresh across its 40 minute run-time.
Things start to really ignite on “Dub Vultures,” where a crooked, string-popping riff rides a deep groove and The Convenience show their mastery of tension and release. “I’ll smite you from miles above” threatens Corson at the song’s feverish peak.
Later, “2022” combines a sawing fiddle, mentions of parricide, and a flip of a Police classic to look back at the not-so-long ago era of six-foot social distancing.
It’s not just the music that keeps morphing – Corson sounds like he’s stretching his voice into new shapes across each song, echoing Damon Albarn at his chilliest on the murky “Opportunity” and Mark E. Smith’s cockeyed mania on the deeply catchy “That’s Why I Never Became a Dancer.”
The album’s best song might be its quietest. “Vanity Shapes,” ditches the distortion for stately piano, fiddle, and a cooing vocal performance from Corson that shows an alternate reality where The Convenience become a chamber pop band.
They close things with “Fake the Feeling,” which starts with the unhelpful buzz of what might be a busted A/C before a crackling riff lights a meandering powder trail to an absolutely ear-splitting explosion of burning feedback.
Confident in its restlessness, Like Cartoon Vampires offers a soft-reset for The Convenience to emerge as a formidable rock n’ roll duo – should they choose to stay that course. They’ve proven here that burning it all down and building something from the ashes makes for wonderfully creative kindling.
By Reed Strength
Reed is a Birmingham-based writer who’s put words to music for Paste, FLOOD Magazine, Vinyl Me, Please, and more.
