Review Summary: Nothing ends with a ribbon around it
I’m tired.
I don’t mean physically, or even mentally. I can feel it in my soul. Raising kids while sustaining a highly demanding career was never an easy task, but in today’s social, political, and economic environment, it feels borderline insurmountable. It’s sometimes tempting to emotionally check out given the world in its present state, but I owe more – if not for myself, then for my children. Yes, it’s a vastly different existence for me than it was in 2011 when I reviewed The Milk Carton Kids’ debut LP
Prologue and spent hours waxing poetic about
what music means, man, and delving into a multitude of observations regarding how human beings interpret music that, in hindsight, were always self-evident. Now, I just don’t care.
That isn’t to say that music doesn’t matter to me anymore, because of course it does. Music is the injection of color into our grayscale existence, and I don’t want to imagine how much more depressing things would be without it. But where I once sought to capture the essence of whatever it is about music that’s capable of changing lives, I now find myself simply seeking respite. I just want a quiet and authentic piece that I can sink into during moments of tension; something that feels like wandering into the wilderness and leaving every piece of stress and technology behind. Right now, that album is
Lost Cause Lover Fool.
This is a record that I’m pretty sure most listeners – even folk fans – won’t immediately warm up to. There’s not a great way to summarize the music’s immediacy that hasn’t been lazily thought up yet furiously typed into the laptop of a reviewer like me in between latte sips:
it’s a grower, “give it some time”,
you have to peel away the layers, and “you just have to try it in the right setting” all apply here, but the main takeaway is that
Lost Cause Lover Fool will very likely dull your senses at first passing. Even for a stripped-down, acoustic indie-folk piece, it’s conspicuously
not flashy. Lead singers Pattengale and Ryan sound…well, tired. There’s nothing here designed to grab your ears and demand attention. Yet, there’s a subtle confidence born of age and wisdom that simply can’t be manufactured. In my experience, those are the records that endure, and this album possesses that intangible quality.
Lost Cause Lover Fool sounds like how its artwork looks. If you could imagine driving to your nearest wooded area, and then casually strolling for miles until you reach a clearing,
those are the vibes that this gives off. ‘Blue Water’ sets the tone right away with its carefully plucked guitars and breezy harmonizations, and suddenly it also feels like The Milk Carton Kids are speaking to folks like me: “I know you worry all the time, I know you got my spinning mind / Take it one day at a time, everything will be alright.” It’s far from the best song on the record, but it establishes a pastoral backdrop and uplifting vibe right off the bat. It isn’t until ‘My Place Among the Stones’, however, that
Lost Cause Lover Fool truly begins to reveal its inner beauty. Amid elegant, glistening acoustics and Pattengale’s rich, somber vocals, we encounter gorgeous sentiments like “Had the love of a mother / I had a home / I was rich on the day that I was born.” The longer you listen to this album, the more you’ll find that
Lost Cause Lover Fool is less about the music on display and more about the feelings that come up while you’re listening. Oftentimes it only takes a heartfelt one-liner, and ‘My Place Among the Stones’ offers the first of many such instances.
The heart of the record features a series of idyllic folk songs with subtly interlinked storytelling. It begins on the bittersweet ‘A Friend Like You’, which seems to recount a tale of unrequited love: “I want to say a thousand things, but a friend like you could be the end of me.” As the story’s narrator drives this person across state lines on a nightlong road trip, he sings, “I'm going to miss you the rest of my life / Did we ever say goodbye?” Immediately following is ‘I’ll Go Home From Here’, which features one of the most subtly beautiful harmonies that Pattengale and Ryan have ever created (legitimately worth name-dropping Simon & Garfunkel) while delivering yet another one of those lyrical gems that
Lost Cause Lover Fool seems to possess in spades: "I'm all right when you say my name.” The title track seeks to provide a sense of resolution to the mini-story that unraveled before us, highlighting the contrast of lines like “Sometimes I'm tough…sometimes I think of you” and “Are you one of the angels tearing me apart?” with clear emotional resonance. He ultimately concludes, “I can't tell myself the truth / It's hard enough playing it cool / My mind ain't tough, it's a saboteur / I'm your lost-cause lover fool.”
Lost Cause Lover Fool isn’t some sad indie breakup album though. Sometimes, it’s bleak in other ways! ‘Blinded and Smiling’ makes me inexplicably depressed despite its generally uplifting notes, and for some reason I always have an image in my head of the ultra-wealthy attending some sort of gala, mocking the very real societal collapse occurring around them: “So you raise your glass and you toast to the end of the world / Everyone laughs, and the cameras flash.” The real dagger comes with the poetic verse, “Happiness passes so easily by / But pain hurts more than ever” – mostly because the older I get, the more I feel like it’s true.
Lost Cause Lover Fool, while sonically quite tranquil, has enough dreary and/or existential lines to continually make you lose yourself in your own thoughts. There’s perhaps no better example than on the penultimate track when The Milk Carton Kids once again seem to encapsulate this pervading sense of doom, but in a way that is so simple and universally true: “Nothing ends with a ribbon around it.” It’s hard to summarize life right now more elegantly than that.
Lost Cause Lover Fool is many things. It’s poetic, immersed in nature, tangled up in romance, and lost in depression. It’ll undoubtedly mean something a little different to everyone who hears it, but the common denominator will be the unwavering sense of
calm this always brings with it. It beckons listeners to slow down and absorb every note, every word. That often feels like a lost art in today’s music industry, where releasing a ton of music as quickly as possible is what’s profitable. That isn’t The Milk Carton Kids’ focus, and the result is an album that may be slow to win over your ears, but its hold on your heart will be lasting. 2011’s
Prologue was a high water mark that The Milk Carton Kids struggled to match throughout their discography – a classic case of peaking early. However, fifteen years later, I can safely say that they’ve finally eclipsed it.
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