Photo credit: Kellen Nordstrom
The audience coming to see The Milk Carton Kids at The Pabst Theater Thursday night got a fresh approach from the acoustic duo with the tragi-comic name. Most notable initially, Joey Ryan and Kenneth Pattengale have switched out formal suits, which had defined their sartorial aesthetic since their national debut at the turn of the decade, for more casual attire. Pattengale, the more boyish-looking and slightly more fidgety of the two, looked especially comfortable in a plaid flannel shirt.
But, after an opening song wherein the men’s harmonized singing’s sole accompaniment was the intricate interplay of their guitars, as is the case on much of their previous recorded output, they brought out a band. The fleshing out of the Kids’ sound with drums, double bass, fiddle, accordion and pedal steel guitar follows from the approach they take on their fifth album, All The Things That I Did And All The Things That I Didn’t Do. The change in musical tack abets a set of songs wherein Ryan and especially Pattengale may be at their most personally transparent.
That transparency derives from less than cheery circumstances. Pattengale’s breakup with his girlfriend of seven years informs the stark emotional devastation of the collection’s titular track and “I’ve Been Loving You.” “Mourning In America” imbues the same kind of heartache into a wider angle of sorrow, likely informed by recent national sociopolitical goings on, perhaps influenced by Ryan’s concern for his young children. Contrasting with such processing of grief, the Milk Carton tradition of deadpan, funny banter hasn’t changed.
The idea of lightening an audience’s psychic load from emotionally weighty songs is one Ryan and Pattengale share with their folk and bluegrass forebears, but none of those predecessors may have been so nerdy as these two. Musings about the number of strings on fiddler Jenna Moynihan’s instrument led to a bit of math humor shtick, along the way incorporating a commentary on the appropriateness for the 4-year-old in the audience of the adult language the guys used a mite. Their contrasting of Pattengale’s recently won bout with cancer to Ryan having lost a pair of glasses made for an edgier bit. If the laughter at the Pabst Theater was any indication, an album of their Smothers Brothers-meets-Demetri Martin brand of funny could become as well received as their growing catalog of mournful music.
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Not all Milk Carton Kids’ songs are incitements to tears, thankfully. The rambling ways of the protagonist in “Girls, Gather ‘Round” end on the hopeful note of a man sticking by his mate. It can be almost discomfiting to see Pattengale present songs so giddy, if only because of the prevalence of sadness throughout most of his and Ryan’s repertoire.
“Promised Land,” one of their three encores after a set of 15 songs, transmuted a phrase of gospel iconography into a less-hopeful portrait of a relationship in tatters. But a cheery bow from the whole ensemble, arm in arm as if ending a play, left a rapt audience on a well-earned high.
