Album Review: The Milk Carton Kids - The Ash & Clay

The next time you find yourself standing in an open field at dawn, a brisk south-westerly wind rolling over the hills and the sun breaking through the clouds, you'll want to be listening to The Ash & Clay. A perfect accompaniment to self-reflection, to solitude, to sepia tones, it's an album designed to soundtrack those haunting, lonely moments when you simply take stock of life.

The Milk Carton Kids are Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan, two guys from Los Angeles – an unexpected source for such a relaxed record. That they don't hail from America's Midwest, from Canada's prairies or Ireland's rolling hills is surprising, given their flowing, minimal acoustica.

The influences of Simon & Garfunkel and Gillian Welch/Dave Rawlings have been much publicised, but are nonetheless apt. Two men, their acoustic guitars and an album full of tender harmonies would be an accurate summary of The Ash & Clay, and supported by what seems to be a lovingly-crafted album cover (the cover image is by an unknown 19th century photographer, harping back to simpler times where this record could find itself being played on Southern porches).

Although The Milk Carton Kids don't stray far from their comfort zone, it's a musical area that fits them wonderfully. Concluding the album is Memphis, a tender love letter to a city that has seen its brightest days: “I guess it takes/More than a king/More than a song/For such a flight/Graceland is a ghost town tonight”.

For The Milk Carton Kids, though, their brightest days are ahead of them, The Ash & Clay the next rung in the ornate, beautiful ladder that they are climbing.