I Only See the Moon is a true album – each track knows about the other songs around it, gently pushing and pulling at their lyrical and instrumental angles. But they sound more like themselves than they ever have by being so selective about departures from the duo format. In the Monterey era, such additions would feel like sacrilege, the end of the Milk Carton Kids. Meanwhile, Ryan plays the banjo for the first time on a Milk Carton Kids album, giving “When You’re Gone” a slightly different feel than the group’s other uptempo tunes and “One True Love” a menacing lilt.

The album closer, “Will You Remember Me”, gets a subtle bass part, while the title track features a subdued string section. This record is the culmination of the band’s work up until this point, and it is as transcendent in sound and feeling as it was in the process.Įxtra instruments are included tastefully on I Only See The Moon to highlight particular tracks.

After 2019’s EP The Only Ones signified a return to the duo format, I Only See the Moon finds a middle ground: a selectively expanded instrumentation that enhances, rather than negates, the sentiments of Monterey.

We didn’t get to find out how the Monterey approach might bring the group to new places. But with 2018’s All the Things That I Did and All the Things That I Didn’t Do, the group enlisted the help of a broader range of instrumentalists. It was an exhilarating turn for the Milk Carton Kids, a proper transition from duo to band. The sound turned endlessly back on itself, a tiny twilit universe of its own. While earlier releases offered a traditional duo format – Joey Ryan providing a rhythmic and harmonic foundation for Kenneth Pattengale to solo over – Monterey found the two guitarists integrating their sound, weaving in and around each other, building one unified landscape with just two instruments. On 2015’s Monterey, the Milk Carton Kids retreated inward.

Face on the milk carton series in order