Review: The Milk Carton Kids Get Back to Basics with 'The Only Ones'

Rating: 7.5/10

The Milk Carton Kids are one of the quietest bands in Americana. While the duo consisting of Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan experimented with full band arrangements on their 2018 album All the Things I Did and All the Things I Didn't Do, they've returned to their roots in 2019 with The Only Ones, out Oct. 18, which pares things back to what they do best; two voices, two guitars, one microphone, and airtight harmonies. To drive home this back to basics approach, the duo is also preparing to embark on an intimate tour titled “An Evening With The Milk Carton Kids in Very Small Venues at Very Low Ticket Prices Tour.”

As has always been the case with The Milk Carton Kids, the lulling gentleness of their music only serves to amplify deeply evocative, and sometimes heart wrenching, lyrics. Nowhere is this on better display than “My Name Is Ana”, far and away the album's highlight. From the opening lines “My name is Ana, you might have read about me. I live in the attic with my family” you are immediately reminded of the story of Anne Frank, the famed WWII holocaust victim. But as the song unfolds, it becomes clear that there is more to Ana than just a retelling of Frank's well-known story. From anachronisms like “you might have seen me on TV” to the name's Spanish spelling of Ana rather than Anne, listeners are pointed to current events, pondering if Ana is a refugee, but whether hiding from murderous gangs in her home country or from immigration officials in America is not known. What is known is that Ana's life is laid out in tragic detail, with reminders that “I leave the lights off so no one else can see, I sleep with my boots on in case they come for me” and, in the song's most devastating line “I came from nothing and I didn't want to leave. Now I live in the attic with my family.”

But there's plenty more to recommend on The Only Ones. Album opener “Every Word I Said” is a plea for peace with an undertone of finality. The pair kicks off the song with “I don't wanna fight anymore. Maybe you were right. I'm so tired.” But soon after sings “Turn around and close the door. I don't want to hurt you anymore. I don't love you any less. It's just the way it is.” Again, Pattingale and Ryan's understated harmonies twist the knife. You want the song's protagonist to scream, to loudly proclaim his love. Instead, the entire song has an air of resignation.

The band finds a little bit of a Western swing melody on “I'll Be Gone.” It's the most vocally forceful of the album's seven tracks, which is to say it's about as loud as most bands' quietest songs. Befitting its cowboy guitar, the song is about walking away and finding freedom on the road. As cowboys, The Milk Carton Kids are more Roy Rogers or the literate Midwestern cowboys from A Prairie Home Companion than Clint Eastwood or John Wayne, but it's a fun song nonetheless.

The Only Ones is a brief album, its seven songs running a smart 25 minutes, but the pair wring every second of emotion and musical space out of that half hour. Live, the band has been described as “half concert, half comedy show” for their dry, frequently awkward, and always funny exchanges between songs. Listening to the outpouring of emotion this album contains, those oases of laughter are much needed.

If you'd like to experience both the music and comedy of The Milk Carton Kids, you can check to see if they're bringing their “An Evening With The Milk Carton Kids in Very Small Venues at Very Low Ticket Prices Tour” to your town. All tickets are less than $20 which, coupled with the small venues means most of the dates are sold out, but some still have a few tickets left. You can find the list of dates here.