The Convenience - Gemini Tee

For New Orleans duo The Convenience, it’s all about the search for a new level of raw expression. With their second LP, Like Cartoon Vampires, that meant creating with their hands much more than buttons or switches, entranced by a hypnotic physicality and collage-y, spur-of-the-moment approach to composition. This led to a beautifully fucked-up avant-rock soundworld, peppered with spidery, atonal guitar work, pointy rhythms, and strident feedback. Such developments may come as a shock for anyone who’s heard their 2021 debut album Accelerator, a sugary funk-pop wonderland. But songwriters and multi-instrumentalists Nick Corson and Duncan Troast are following what makes them most giddy right now: cathartic noise-rock, enigmatic drone, and playful experimentalism.

While in many regards, Like Cartoon Vampires is a total reinvention, it’s also a return to their roots. They describe Accelerator as a pit stop into groovy synth-pop, heavily inspired by their time in fellow Crescent City group Video Age, rather than a permanent move into their sonic dream home. Corson studied guitar and performed in rock bands for most of his life, while Troast grew up primarily playing the piano and keys. Eventually, Corson experienced bouts of disillusionment with his instrument of choice, in part due to his formalist training, but once Troast fell down a rabbit hole of strange guitar music he’d never heard, a twinkle formed in Corson’s eye, as he was eager to share his knowledge. Troast pored over early Fall LPs and was magnetized by the mutant disco and no wave of ZE Records, which bridged the gap between his funky predilections and post-punk fascinations. The pair also rekindled their love of krautrock and bonded over a budding interest in classical minimalism and guitarist Glenn Branca. Once they started working on new material, it was clear that they wanted to loosen up and go full-on mad scientist with the electric guitar.

Sessions were characterized by gnarly, improvisational jams, which were then edited, and they tinkered with everything from cassette loops, found sounds, and 808s to prepared guitar and harmolodic tunings. As for their dual guitar work, Corson found defying conventions thrilling, and Duncan reveled in an ignorance of the notes he was playing. From both poles, it was pure frenzied emotion plugged straight into amplifiers, as they composed with a more physical, impulsive approach. Tracks like “Target Offer” and “Fake the Feeling” quake with ear-splitting guitar feedback, while “Pray’r” and “Rats” eschew their groove worship in favor of haunting minimalism. Song after song, Accelerator’s pop influences are traded in for more eccentric frontiers—James Brown for James Blood Ulmer, Prince for Pere Ubu—but the clear common denominators of their first two records are spellbinding funky instincts and a mastery of texture. Their exuberant pop sensibilities also poke out with relative frequency, especially on the melodic post-punk opener “I Got Exactly What I Wanted” and the tender, bucolic “Vanity Shapes,” complete with violin from Lawn’s Mac Folger.

Lyrically, Like Cartoon Vampires collects dispatches from a dying empire. Characters are devoured by alienation and vanity, though society doesn’t bat an eye, sleeping comfortably under the blanket of American rugged individualism and consumerism-as-culture dogma. The despair is alarmingly mundane, as dystopian markers like self-driving cars and “designer toothpaste” are plentiful but matter-of-fact, and in this sphere, the only choices that seem to multiply are the ways one can shrink inside themselves. Corson paints with a slippery tongue, artfully utilizing classic Americana, phonetic improvisation, and fragmented, surrealist word play to capture a simmering discontent that is at times sickly humorous. “I whispered something just to make sure I was still there / I was still there, rats,” Corson mutters. And his knack for Dadaist mischief knows no bounds: “Some folks love dancing / Like cars love crashing / And so I dance for hours / And I eat the wedding flowers.”

But make no mistake, these songs are not merely disaffected ennui—music-making and collaboration are intensely emotional practices for The Convenience, and they reflect a shrieking lust for life. From absorbing post-punk grooves and punishing guitar squalls to bewildering experimental zig-zags, Corson and Troast get on like a house on fire, and their close friendship underpins each spontaneous exorcism, every bell and whistle. With its droning propulsion and fickle outbursts, Like Cartoon Vampires is undoubtedly a city record, and just like the modern metropolis, the full breadth of humanity is on display, warts and all. And after all, how could perfection ever compare?