- Winspear
- 2025
Hey. Hey you! You like rock 'n' roll, right? I mean, who doesn't? Fucking losers, mainly. Can you imagine? Pssh. There's an important qualifier to get out of the way, though. As a discerning listener, you're not in the market for just any bar-band rawk slop, and frankly, some of the bands being propped up by the cool kids strike you as a bit… inert? Swaggerless? You don't want to set up strict parameters, but you know what you like when you hear it. You like rock 'n' roll music with style, personality, some real kick to it. You're into bands like the Convenience.
The Convenience rock. It's undeniable, but it has not always been so. Don't take that wrong; they were good before, they just didn't rock in the conventional sense. In 2021, the New Orleans duo released their full-length debut Accelerator. Despite a title that portended maximum rock action, the album presented funky, finely manicured pop rock — clearly in thrall to Prince, possibly in debt to Chromeo, most likely informed by band members Nick Corson and Duncan Troast's tenure in the underrated synth-pop band Video Age.
Four years later, the Convenience are back this week with their second album, Like Cartoon Vampires, and it sounds nothing like Accelerator. They've significantly shifted their aesthetic, moving in a direction that you — as a connoisseur of self-possessed rock music with a marvelously fluid sense of movement — will almost certainly find appealing. Yep, these dudes rock now. But not necessarily in a way that will make you involuntarily utter "dudes rock." They rock with a deadpan urgency and an off-kilter yet unimpeachably smooth sense of rhythm. Even when they quiet down, as on the shadowy advance track "Opportunity" — even when they all but entirely strip out the drums on "Rats" — their music maintains an itchy, contagious pulse. You might call them a post-punk band if they weren't so obviously playing rock 'n' roll.
Though the influences have changed, the Convenience continue to wear them proudly. If Prince was the lodestar last time around, this time it might be Spoon. On opening track "I Got Exactly What I Wanted," it's impossible to miss the mix of gritty swagger and sinewy minimalism long since mastered by Britt Daniel and Jim Eno. That snappy backbeat, those jagged stabs of rhythm guitar, a feline lead riff that casually slinks its way through the tightly wound groove, MVP-grade bass propelling it all forward without overshadowing the topline — it's a perfect specimen. Corson says the song is about the "discomforting mental friction" that inevitably comes with stating that your desires have been precisely fulfilled, and the music reflects that kind of nervous energy, but it may well provide you with the kind of uncomplicated enjoyment that its very existence rejects.
What other bands might you hear echoing throughout these 13 variegated tracks? Perhaps Parquet Courts, the triumphantly rugged torchbearers for mainline record-collector indie rock, or Omni, the neon-stained post-punk combo who know how to make their spiky little livewire melodies intersect with their herky-jerk rhythms at pleasing angles. When that melodica comes blaring into "Café Style" you will happily remember Clinic exist, though the song's reggae-inflected backbeat has at least as much in common with the Clash. Speaking of the spirit of '77, the whole album is haunted by Wire, the veteran post-punk pioneers who, come to think of it, taught early Spoon a thing or two as well. And the song title "Dub Vultures" may well come with a knowing wink from this band.
These nervy guitar-bass-drums contraptions are a delivery system for lyrics about anxiety, despair, dystopia — all the bad vibes we've become intimately familiar with here at the end of all things. "I killed my mother/ I killed my father too/ Ain't that just living in 2022," goes one striking introductory line; soon Corson's pleading, "Don't stand so close to me," but not like Sting meant it. On "Target Offer," he's longing for the ancient world but stuck in this one, combing through email blasts and declaring, "That's something that speaks to me in published trick op-ed." He wrestles with late capitalism on the Fall-flavored "Western Pepsi Cola Town" and his own self-loathing on the gentle, minimal outlier "Vanity Shapes," self-identifying as "the son of suburban cum."
This is the work of guys who've learned to laugh bitterly when they want to cry. Sometimes it's outright hilarious, as on the bass-powered "That's Why I Never Became A Dancer" (which will have you swinging your hips nonetheless), a savvy look at evolving concepts of cool: "Was just a matter of time/ So farewell to a friend of mine/ He gave his life to the heavy metal/ A dark prince of the 8th grade culture." Sometimes the gags are subtler: "I whispered something just to make sure I was still there/ I was still there, rats." More than any particular sonic trait, that sardonic edge is what holds Like Cartoon Vampires together. Indeed, while channeling Sonic Youth's shaggier side on the sprawling 10-minute closer "Fake The Feeling," they even pose the question, "Where's your sense of humor, buddy?"
On that note, buddy, does this sound like something you'd be into? An album that kicks ass, emphatically yet elusively, exploring a cornucopia of ragged-yet-refined approaches to rock/punk/indie as a means of staving off the unbearable burden of consciousness? Can I interest you in a band that's smart but never too clever, approachable but not really poppy, adventurous but overflowing from an unmistakable point of view? You might not like much about this world, but the Convenience? Listener, this is one rock band you're going to appreciate.
Like Cartoon Vampires is out 4/18 on Winspear.
Other albums of note out this week:
• Tunde Adebimpe's Thee Black Boltz
• Julien Baker & TORRES' Send A Prayer My Way
• Superheaven's Superheaven
• Rhiannon Giddens & Justin Robinson's What Did The Blackbird Say To The Crow
• quickly, quickly's I Heard That Noise
• Beirut's A Study Of Losses
• ZORA's Z D A Y
• Real Lies' WE WILL ANNIHILATE OUR ENEMIES
• The self-titled LP from Chime Oblivion: John Dwyer and David Barbarossa
• Bill Fox's Resonance
• Heavy Lungs' Caviar
• King Kraken's March Of The Gods
• Lostboycrow's The Sound Of God Laughing
• Mayday Parade's Sweet
• Scrounge's Almost Like You Could
• Adrian Younge’s Something About April III
• Little Barrie & Malcolm Catto's Electric War
• Tony Holiday's Keep Your Head Up
• MIEN's MIIEN
• Russell Haswell's Deep Time
• Sawyer Hill's Heartbreak Hysteria
• Hieroglyphic Being's Dance Music 4 Bad People
• Divide And Dissolve's Insatiable
• Gryphon Rue's I Keep My Diamond Necklace In A Pond Of Sparkling Water
• Iron Lung's Adapting // Crawling
• Rindert Lammers' Thank You Kirin Kiki
• Domino Kirke's The Most Familiar Star
• Melvins 1983's Thunderball
• Sixpence None The Richer's Live At Gruene Hall
• Ancient Death's Ego Dissolution
• Jackie Meyers' What About The Butterfly
• Fotoform's Grief Is A Garden (Forever In Bloom)
• Cumulus' We’ve Got It All
• Sunnbrella's gutter angel
• Aittala's Machines
• Gentle Leader XIV's Joke In The Shadow
• Neil Young's Coastal: The Soundtrack
• Lucy Railton's Blue Veil
• George Brown's Jazz In Paris
• Tribunal's In Penitence And Ruin
• Avery Friedman's New Thing
• Mother Nature's Loving, Joyful And Free
• Ludwig Göransson's SINNERS Score
• Dragon Resort's The Last Fool Left On Earth
• midwxst's archangel
• Niontay's Fada<3of$
• Don Louis' Liquor Talkin' Deluxe
• chlothegod's I Feel Different Every Day (Deluxe)
• Various Artists' Inspired By Jane Soundtrack
• Strange Neighbors' People Pleasers Pleasing People
• Isabel LaRosa's Raven
• Too $hort's Sir Too $hort Vol. 1 - Freaky Tales
• Various Artists' Lost Records: Bloom & Rage
• Stewart Copeland's Wild Concerto
• Witch Post's Beast EP
• TAKAAT's Is Noise Vol. 1 EP
• Blackwater Holylight's If You Only Knew EP
• Melinda's Melinda EP
• Trim's No Caller ID EP
• Lauren Presley's Hanging In The Balance EP
• Why Bother?'s You Are Part Of The Experiment EP
• Michael Marcagi's Midwest Kid EP
• Ray Vaughn's Dollar Menu EP
• Alex Isley's When EP
• Cold Meat's Cake And Arse Party EP
• Group Listening's Tell Everyone Everything EP
• Jessy Fury's Hollywood Forever EP
We rely on reader subscriptions to deliver articles like the one you're reading. Become a member and help support independent media!
