The Milk Carton Kids are Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan. Hailing from the intriguingly named town of Eagle Rock, California, these two men have forged their flat picking powers and stunning emotive vocals together into a folk duo of excellence. One serendipitous meeting has enabled them to create a folk duo that is destined to run for quite some time and that’s the truth.
Pattengale and Ryan have been together for four years now, since 2011, but they have produced a body of work that has turned heads in the world of new folk and Americana. With people such as T-Bone Burnett and Joe Henry singing their praises, these talented young men have put on a display of song writing that can best be described as premium grade folk.
For anyone who witnessed their live performances in 2013, when they first visited Australia, they would know that their close harmonies and note perfect picking hushed the crowds. Their on stage banter has to be mentioned because they had the audiences in tears of laughter with their dead pan patter. Simply, these two troubadours are experts in their trade and the albums they have deposited into our lives are things of beauty.
Monterey, their fourth record in as many years, is about to be released and it is as masterful as any of their other recordings. The gorgeous recording captures their vocals in a way that the other recordings have not. The clarity as you listen to the title track, ‘Monterey’, defines this record as a sonic masterpiece and not because it was recorded, mixed and mastered in the finest studio in the land.
Joey Ryan has talked about the process in interviews and he has noted that they hatched this plan to record on stages while they toured. The duo would front up at the gig hours before they were to play and set up some microphones and pro tools and record some songs. Every day and every venue was different and this is where Ryan and Pattengale hit onto something so simple, yet so perfect. They had discovered that they were much more comfortable playing on a stage, not in some cabin in the woods or a sterile studio, but the places they have been appearing night after night for a few years now.
What a fabulous idea and it works perfectly and the exquisiteness of the recording is that each room adds a different quality but also gives the music the room and warmth it deserves. Half of the songs were picked from various venues and the others were recorded over a week at Nashville’s Presbyterian Church. What a blessing this live recording without an audience is!
‘High Hopes’ kicks off as a finger picking dynamo and the gorgeous play work between their harmonies echoes acts like Crosby, Stills and Nash and the often compared Simon and Garfunkel. The intricacies of their picking and the sound of their fingers sliding on the strings comes through on tracks such as the somewhat melancholy ‘Shooting Shadows’ or the slightly countrified ‘The City Of Our Lady’.
At just under forty minutes, Monterey is much like a Milk Carton Kids concert, where you are always left wanting just one more track. Of course you don’t get the humour that you are always surrounded with when you see them live, but you know that one day some of these songs will be delivered as out takes with their banter between each other left in for our listening pleasure.
The Milk Carton Kids will be in Australia in July as headliners for the Bello Winter Festival on Saturday the 4th of July and with a few other shows around our land. Monterey is released this Friday the 15th of May on Anti-.
Please check out The Milk Carton Kids launching their new release here. They might give you a better idea on why you need to hear this record and better yet, go see them live. Or you may just not stop laughing at this perfect pairing of two talented individuals.
