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If you liked the folk music of Simon & Garfunkel, Dylan, Roger McGuinn, and king of the folkies, Woody Guthrie, you are going to love The Milk Carton Kids’ second release, entitled Prologue.
Not familiar with them? The Milk Carton Kids are a duo, consisting of singers, song writers, and acoustic guitar players Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan, who hail from Los Angeles.
This CD immediately captured my undivided attention, with the opening chords of the first track, “Michigan.” The guitar strumming was Neil Young-like, but as soon as the vocals came in, I blurted out “Simon & Garfunkel,” especially hearing the voice of Paul Simon in my mind. The second track again, wow—if you close your eyes, you’d swear it was a new Paul Simon record. “Homeward Bound,” a S&G classic, could easily have been written and sung by Pattengale and Ryan.
The lyrics are hauntingly beautiful and brilliant. An example from the song “Milk Carton Kids”:
This ain’t no time for regret
To witness without mercy
But neither to forget
If we keep looking backwards, we’ll break our necks
This ain’t no time for regret
This ain’t no time for regret
What creates the beauty of this CD is the simple instrumentation against such wonderful lyrics, to create an overall sound that soothes yet makes you think and dwell on your own life experiences. As a kid, and maybe still to this day, do you, or have you ever, laid down outside on the lawn, on a beautiful summer night, gazing at the clouds and stars and shaping in your mind the images you think you see? At the same time, you were trying to separate all of those complex feelings you had at the moment, whether it was over someone you liked, things at home, all of the simple yet complicated parts of your life. That’s what this record did for me. It brought me back to being on that lawn.
As guitarists, they sure can pick! “New York” has some wonderful guitar playing behind the vocals that accentuates every word sung. In fact, for those of you who play the acoustic guitar, you will immediately hear and relish the complexity of the playing, yet it sounds so simple.
I was going to write that the major drawback for the record was the short length of each song, but, the more I think about it, it is because each song has lyrics that paint a perfect picture. Any more words, and the picture would get muddied or distorted. Their singing and lyrics have a clarity and perfection that is a huge disparity from most of today’s “popular” music.
Can you imagine that? A record that is not too loud, with no drum machines, no synth sounds, not any vulgarity, and no sexual overtones. Prologue is just pure, unaltered Americana music. What a wonderful, refreshing change.
Thank you, Kenneth and Joey.
