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THE MILK CARTON KIDS — LOST CAUSE LOVER FOOL
On their seventh studio album, Lost Cause Lover Fool (due April 24 on
Far Cry/Thirty Tigers), The Milk Carton Kids offer nine songs that, more
than ever, invite listeners to lean in close and linger inside the small
moments the record quietly magnifies.

When Los Angeles–based singer-songwriters Kenneth Pattengale and
Joey Ryan first emerged in 2011, they did so with a sound as
unassuming as their “marketing” plan. They recorded their ten-song
debut, Prologue, with just their two guitars and two voices. They posted
it online as a free download, sending the link to friends via email. Even
amidst the foot stomps and hand claps carrying Folk into the
mainstream, hundreds of thousands of people managed to find Prologue
in that first year. From the beginning, The Milk Carton Kids were more
interested in precision than volume.

“We were very conscious back then of trying to make our two voices
sound like one thing,” Ryan recalls. “And we wanted our guitars to sound
like one instrument too.”

That instinct toward unity and understatement became the foundation of
a career that steadily expanded without ever losing its center.
Fast-forward fifteen years, through chaotic world events, a global
pandemic and its aftermath. Through Ryan’s two children and
Pattengale’s move to Nashville then back to LA, his bout with cancer.
The pair went from darlings of the Americana Music Association Festival
to hosting its annual awards show at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium.
They started their own Sad Songs Summer Camp, helping songwriters
dig deeper and darker through an intense workshopping process. They
also founded the Los Angeles Folk Festival, spotlighting musicians and
comedians in the broader Folk community. (In its first two years, the
festival has featured performances by Emmylou Harris, Waxahatchee,
Sierra Ferrell, Willie Watson, Valerie June, and more.)

Along the way, the duo has received four Grammy nominations and their
songs have been featured in numerous film and TV projects, from Gus
Van Zandt’s Promised Land to Tina Fey’s goofball comedy series Girls
5Eva. They’ve collaborated with a who’s who of players from Joe Henry
and Rosanne Cash to Sara Bareilles and Josh Ritter.

Through all of it, The Milk Carton Kids have remained committed to a
deceptively simple idea: music can help turn down the volume on a
chaotic world and make room for what matters most.

Lost Cause Lover Fool is the clearest distillation of that idea yet. With
roots-leaning arrangements and a deep trust in space, the album
expands the duo’s signature minimalist sound while somehow making it
even more focused.

“This album is, at its core, a collection of songs about transformation,”
Pattengale explains. “About the shifting terrain of consciousness and the
stories we build to understand who we’ve been, who we are, and who
we’re becoming. Each song takes a single moment, sometimes
examined with microscopic closeness and sometimes viewed from a
great distance, and lets it expand until it becomes an entire world. By
enlarging small feelings until they’re inhabitable, the record looks for
eternity not in the sweeping or monumental, but in the intimate specifics
that usually pass too quickly to notice.”

The record opens with “Blue Water,” led by the lonesome pluck of a
banjo. Handled with restraint, the instrument feels less like traditional
bluegrass and more like morning light cast across a stretch of grass.
Lyrically, the song captures a fleeting image: a man walking along a
river, thinking about the child who once lay on his chest and now shares
his worried mind. It’s a moment so slight it could easily be dismissed,
except that it holds an emotion as universal as it is brief.
That instinct to pause, to hover, to honor passing thoughts runs through
the entire album. The songs on Lost Cause Lover Fool live in interior
spaces, where the act of noticing becomes a kind of devotion.

The title track drifts through an unsettled internal monologue, its narrator
caught between confidence and doubt as memory and worry begin to
resemble one another. “Sometimes I’m tough / Sometimes I’m not
enough / Sometimes I think of you,” Pattengale sings, as the song circles
its thoughts without resolving them. “A Friend Like You” recalls a road
trip through Texas and New Mexico and the particular ache of sharing
space with someone when the most important things remain unspoken.
“Blinded and Smiling” compresses joy, love, and mortality into the instant
it takes to snap a photograph, reckoning with how quickly even the
happiest moments slip into the past.

“Young Love” closes the album by wondering what ever became of a
long-ago companion. As melancholy as that question might be, in The
Milk Carton Kids’ hands it feels quietly illuminating, as though the
riverside walk where the album began has led back into a clearing. The
past may be painful to revisit, but letting the mind wander through it can
also bring perspective and grace.

Musically, the duo continues the subtle expansion of their palette.
There’s banjo, drums, choral backing vocals, all pulling toward a unified
center. Even as their arrangements grow richer, the goal remains the
same.

“As we're adding more and more layers,” Ryan says, “we're still drawn to
the idea of a sound where the pieces give themselves up to the greater
whole.”

At just nine songs, Lost Cause Lover Fool resists excess by design. Its
brevity is not a limitation but a philosophy. A quiet argument for
mindfulness, economy, and attention. In an age of constant noise and
endless content, The Milk Carton Kids make a case for staying small,
staying present, and listening closely. It’s what they’ve always done.
Lost Cause Lover Fool doesn’t strain for relevance or make a spectacle
of itself. It simply pauses long enough for the listener to step inside. It

reminds us, gently but insistently, that the smallest moments are often the ones that last.

Massey Hall

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