Description
The Milk Carton Kids – All the Things That I Did and All the Things That I Didn’t Do – Milky Clear Double Vinyl Record
The Milk Carton Kids had established a distinctive sound through two voices and two acoustic guitars before All the Things That I Did and All the Things That I Didn’t Do opened that setting to a larger ensemble. Released in 2018, the album keeps Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan’s close harmonies at its center while allowing the arrangements to move with a wider range of color and weight. The change suits songs concerned with uncertainty, regret and the distance between an imagined life and the one that actually develops. The voices remain intimate, but the surrounding music gives those private reflections a broader setting in which to unfold.
Producer Joe Henry and engineer Ryan Freeland recorded the album in the Sun Room at House of Blues Studios in Nashville during October 2017. Henry’s involvement is a useful clue to the character of the record: acoustic detail matters, and the performances have room to develop without every space being occupied. Pattengale and Ryan retain the finely matched phrasing that defined their earlier work, while the added instrumentation changes how the songs can rise, settle or linger. Their guitars still provide an essential part of the texture. The difference is that a phrase no longer has to carry the whole arrangement by itself; it can become one element in a more expansive musical conversation.
“Just Look at Us Now” introduces the album’s reflective outlook, measuring youthful expectations against a more complicated present. “Nothing Is Real” takes that uncertainty in a different direction, while “Younger Years” and “Mourning in America” connect personal experience to a wider sense of unease. The writing is direct enough to establish a scene, but it allows conflicting feelings to remain inside it. That quality works particularly well with the duo’s harmonies. Two voices moving closely together can make a line sound reassuring, even when the thought itself is troubled, and the tension between those qualities gives the songs much of their emotional depth.
“One More for the Road” is the album’s most expansive performance, extending beyond ten minutes and allowing the musicians to explore a much longer form than the surrounding songs. It is a significant part of the record’s identity, showing what the broader ensemble makes possible while keeping the duo’s melodic sensibility in view. Shorter pieces such as “You Break My Heart” and “A Sea of Roses” demonstrate the other side of their writing, concentrating an emotional situation into a few carefully shaped minutes. “Blindness,” “Big Time” and “Unwinnable War” add different shades of reflection, and the closing “All the Things…” returns to the accumulation of choices and omissions suggested by the album’s title.
This ANTI- edition presents the complete twelve-song album on two milky clear vinyl records, with music on three sides and an etching on the fourth. It is a revealing release for listeners familiar with the spare arrangements of The Ash & Clay or Monterey, showing how the Milk Carton Kids could enlarge their sound while preserving the qualities that made the partnership distinctive. The additional musicians help support the writing’s changes in scale, from a closely observed personal moment to a longer passage of musical reflection. What remains constant is the relationship between Pattengale and Ryan: their voices fit tightly together, their guitar parts retain a delicate clarity, and their songs find meaning in the complicated feelings that survive after a simple answer has stopped being convincing.
Brand new, never played and still sealed in the factory plastic
Track Listing
Side A
Just Look at Us Now
Nothing Is Real
Younger Years
Mourning in America
You Break My Heart
Side B
Blindness
One More for the Road
Big Time
Side C
A Sea of Roses
Unwinnable War
I've Been Loving You
All the Things…
Side D
Etched side — no audio
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