The Convenience is a production and songwriting duo from New Orleans.
Like Cartoon Vampires is their meticulously messy new album that functions like a total reinvention as well as a return to their roots. Set for an April 18, 2025 release date via Winspear, it’s available for preorder now on LP, CD, and cassette.
New single “Dub Vultures” arrives with a hook that will lodge itself under your skin, as well as a stop motion music video that brings to life the album’s collage’d, scrappy front cover.
Along with album details, the group debuted “I Got Exactly What I Wanted,” the album’s opening track:
“On the first single from their newly announced album, Like Cartoon Vampires, the New Orleans-based duo of Duncan Troast and Nick Corson (also touring members of Video Age and Hovvdy) swap the ’80s-indebted smooth funk sounds of their debut, Accelerator, for a crunchy piece of post-punk.”—The Fader, Songs You Need In Your Life This Week
"a tight and wiry rocker built around sharp-edged chords, driven along by pointed, less-is-more bass and narrated with a casual edginess that complements the track’s neurotic rhythm."
—Stereogum, #4 Song of the Week
"Captures the spirit of the past, yet still feels refreshingly current."
—Consequence, Best Songs of the Week
Like Cartoon Vampires does not include the September’s singles “Routiner” and “Postcard.”
"Twenty-first century post-punk runs a vast gamut from garagey bashing to sleek (unknown) pleasures to hi-hat riding dancepunk. New Orleans’ The Convenience somehow sits at the center of this triangle, casual enough not too feel too polished, tight without being showy, and steeped in elements of disco, dub and avant garde sounds enough to feel fascinatingly experimental without losing their sense of fun."
—Treble, Essential Tracks of the Week
"The two new songs from this New Orleans post-punk duo do completely different things. Where 'Routiner' is all jagged edges and staccato guitars, 'Postcard' is soft at its edges, melancholia underpinned by a fluttering violin and only accentuated by the occasional eruption of noise."
—The Fader’s Songs You Need In Your Life This Week
—Treble, Essential Tracks of the Week
"The two new songs from this New Orleans post-punk duo do completely different things. Where 'Routiner' is all jagged edges and staccato guitars, 'Postcard' is soft at its edges, melancholia underpinned by a fluttering violin and only accentuated by the occasional eruption of noise."
—The Fader’s Songs You Need In Your Life This Week
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.
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.