The Convenience - Like Cartoon Vampires

On their second record as The Convenience, Like Cartoon Vampires, New Orleans multi-instrumentalists Nick Corson and Duncan Troast embrace a hypnotic physicality and a collage-y, spur-of-the-moment approach to composition. The result is an avant-rock soundworld, peppered with spidery, atonal guitar work, pointy rhythms, and strident feedback, which may strike as a total reinvention following the sugary funk-pop of their 2021 debut album Accelerator. With their second LP, the duo’s creative process shifted, leaning more on tactile methods than digital tools. Sessions were characterized by gnarly, improvisational jams, experimenting with everything from cassette loops and found sounds to 808s.

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 for more eccentric frontiers, with the common denominators being the duo’s spellbinding, funky instincts and a mastery of texture. Lyrically, Like Cartoon Vampires collects dispatches from a dying empire—characters devoured by alienation and vanity, though society doesn’t bat an eye. But make no mistake, these songs are not merely disaffected ennui; music-making and collaboration are intensely emotional practices for The Convenience, reflecting a shrieking lust for life