Lost Cause Lover Fool

Description

On their seventh studio album, Lost Cause Lover Fool (due out April 24 on Far Cry/Thirty Tigers), The Milk Carton Kids offer us nine tracks that, more than ever, invite the listener to linger over the small moments the album magnifies. Much has changed since the striking arrival of The Milk Carton Kids — singer-songwriters Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan, from Los Angeles — on the folk scene in 2011. And The Milk Carton Kids have evolved too. But one thing remains: Pattengale and Ryan continue to create music that urges us to turn down the volume on a chaotic world and savor what matters most. With folk-tinged arrangements, Lost Cause Lover Fool enriches the duo’s signature minimalist sound, so beloved by their fans, while making it, in a way, even more intimate. The album opens with the melancholy banjo notes of “Blue Water.” Often used for its dazzling speed or rhythmic drive, the banjo is played here with delicacy and restraint, evoking more a ray of sunshine over a stretch of grass than a full-fledged bluegrass instrument. The lyrics of this opening track dwell on a snapshot of a man walking along a riverbank, remembering the child who used to curl up against him and who now shares his worried thoughts. A moment so fleeting it might have gone unnoticed, were it not charged with an emotion as universal as it is ephemeral. Lost Cause Lover Fool magnifies these precious moments, turns them into spellbinding worlds, and invites us — implores us — to fully seize them. For fans of SIMON & GARFUNKEL, HANGAR NORD, JIM CROCE.