Elemental Concerns

The music of nascent LA duo The Milk Carton Kids is steeped in the simplicity and authenticity that has for generations typified the best exponents of the folk and country genres, which is why it's no surprise, when we track down the pair, guitarist and vocalist Joey Ryan – one half of the act alongside partner-in-crime Kenneth Pattengale – explains that they've just interrupted their biggest US tour to date to bolt back to their hometown to perform at the nomination ceremony for the 2013 Americana Music Association Awards.

Not only were The Milk Carton Kids nominated in the 'Emerging Artist Of The Year' category on the back of their gorgeous new album, The Ash & Clay, but they also got to perform alongside such legends of the field such as T-Bone Burnett, Buddy Miller and Jim Lauderdale to an audience of their peers and industry stalwarts. This honour was perhaps made even more daunting by the fact that the Americana genre is in particularly rude health at the moment, no doubt buoyed by the recent successes of a raft of artists such as Justin Townes Earle, Old Crow Medicine Show, Gillian Welch and The Felice Brothers, to literally name but a few, who have dragged the proud and noble musical form from the margins back into the spotlight in recent times.

“Yeah, I think so. If you're looking at the pendulum of mainstream public opinion that swings back from genre to genre every few years – I think it's definitely swung in our direction,” Ryan concurs. “But I think we've tried to stay rooted in the fact that really, Americana music – or folk music or whatever you want to call it – is a very strong and unbroken tradition, and the fact that it periodically gets shunted into the mainstream spotlight doesn't in the long-term in my opinion affect the overall health of the genre, or the attitude towards making music that yields some of those swings of perception.”

Given their status as current torchbearers of the form, the two Milk Carton Kids are conscious they're part of a rich and ongoing lineage that can be traced right back to the roots of the country and folk traditions.

“Yeah I think so, it's hard not to be,” Ryan admits. “As an acoustic folk duo with two guitars and two guys singing close harmonies, we've never been accused of inventing a brand new sound or anything like that. If there's anything compelling or unique in what we're doing, it's bringing our own contemporary and hopefully thoughtful perspectives to a tradition that's been going strong for many decades.”

With the pair's beautiful vintage guitars and penchant for writing timeless songs, it's clear the concept of authenticity is an important part of The Milk Carton Kids' arsenal.

“Yeah, it is,” Ryan agrees vigorously. “Aesthetically – just in using the old guitars and having the music taste that we have – a lot of it on the surface could be misconstrued as being referential, or traditionalist for the sake of it, so I think the authenticity comes with bringing a modern perspective or speaking with an honest voice. We grew up in the '80s and the '90s in Los Angeles, California, and now we're both 31-years-old in 2013. It's a tumultuous and interesting and engaging world that we find ourselves living in, so I think that if we write honestly and authentically about the world around us and about our experience of it, that's hopefully what we can bring to bear on the genre. Which is in turn what the genre has always valued.”

This analysis of modern society, prevalent on The Ash & Clay, is couched in a manner that sounds beautiful and soft on initial listens – largely due to its simple arrangements, lush harmonies and beautiful tones – but on closer examination this veneer is seen to mask a dark interior, whereby the lyrics hold nothing back in their assessment of the modern malaise.

“It is dark – there's a lot of darkness to be found if you're looking for it and we made a point to investigate some of that, both within ourselves and in our country and our society and the world that we live in. But at the same time, I mean even there in the title track of the album and the opening track, Hope Of A Lifetime, we were very conscious of how much we were pointing out the shortcomings of ourselves and the world around us, so it was really important for us to imbue the entire thing with an overriding sense of hope that we actually feel inside. That comes from a very deep place and a very personal place, and says that there's always a way to make things better and that there's always a way to keep moving forward with the intention of making yourself and the world around you better. So I would hate to think that anyone took all of that darkness out of the album without also getting the more than just a glimmer of hope that pervades all of it.”

This darkness in the shared vision of The Milk Carton Kids has been there from the very outset. When the pair first crossed paths about three years ago Ryan was drawn irrevocably to one of Pattengale's more macabre compositions, and it wasn't long after this first confrontation that the pair put their respective solo careers on hold to form the partnership that's paying such handsome dividends today.

“Well, we like to say that 'career' is a generous term for what we were doing on our own,” Ryan chuckles. “We were trying – we were having a go at it. It was a pretty honest attempt, to the point where I'd been on tour pretty steadily to not really declining audiences but not really exploding audiences, and Kenneth had been putting out records on his own for about eight years and not touring – he liked to put out records and play one show to celebrate its release and then go back and make another record, so he's got about eight albums following that model, which is perhaps why nobody had ever heard of him.

“Then one day we met, and it was over a song that Kenneth was singing at one of his solo shows the first time I saw him. It was called Memoirs Of An Owned Dog, a song written from the perspective of a dead dog who's just been hit by a truck. The lyrics are the dog's last remembrances that he scribbles on a piece of paper as he lies dying in the street – you can see why there's all that darkness seeping into The Ash & Clay; it all started from there, such a dark perspective. It's an incredibly compelling song with a unique approach.”