Americana folk duo The Milk Carton Kids will release their brand new album, Lost Cause Lover Fool, on April 4th via Far Cry Records in partnership with Thirty Tigers. Renowned for their songwriting, folk sensibilities and vocal harmonies, the duo’s first release from the album, the single, A Friend Like You, is out now. “The single is about desperately trying to stay a little longer inside a fragile moment. You know it can’t hold, but if you can just keep the car wheels rolling, you can pretend it might last forever – that nothing has to change,” share the duo, Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan.
Produced by Pattengale, the album is the duo’s seventh studio cut, expanding on their signature sound while staying grounded in the songwriting and arrangements that define their work. The nine-song collection focuses on the small, quietly magnified moments that lie at the heart of the record. The album can be pre-ordered here.
“This album is, at its core, a collection of songs about transformation,” Pattengale reflects, “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.”
Founded in 2011, the duo swiftly emerged as a force in Americana folk tradition, blending harmonies and musicianship with a contemporary songwriting sensibility. They have earned four Grammy nominations, had their music featured in film and television projects, including Gus Van Zandt’s Promised Land and Tina Fey’s Girls5Eva, and collaborated with Joe Henry, Roxanne Cash, Sara Bareilles, and Josh Ritter, among many others. Their 2023 album, I Only See The Moon, received widespread praise.
In October 2023, the pair founded the Los Angeles Folk Festival, with its first annual iteration earning accolades from Variety, The Bluegrass Situation, KCRW, The Orange County Register, and others. The festival has featured performances by critically acclaimed artists Emmylou Harris, Waxahatchee, Sierra Ferrell, Willie Watson, and more.
Lost Cause Lover Fool tracklisting:
1. Blue Water
2. My Place Among the Stones
3. A Friend Like You
4. I’ll Go Home From Here
5. Lost Cause Lover Fool
6. Blinded and Smiling
7. Sad Song
8. Ribbon
9. Young Love
