Kevin Bronson on July 19th, 2011

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Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan, the double-barreled purveyors of Americana who announced their intentions as the Milk Carton Kids by releasing a live album this spring, today unveiled their first proper studio recording. It’s titled “Prologue,” an exceedingly tender and unassumingly spellbinding collection of tunes the L.A. duo – wielding just two acoustic guitars and two voices – recorded with Eric Robinson. None other than Joe Henry wrote a foreword for the album, pointing out how Pattengale and Ryan have succeeded in creating a unified “voice” for their music. Writes Henry: “They move to become a single, shadowy persona within the frame of ‘Prologue’ – like young twins cast to tag-team one demanding role in a terse-but-tender film by Elia Kazan, haunted and hounded across a lonely landscape in search of the love that might provide their collective character a fleeting taste of both redemption and self-recognition.” Yeah, and the songs are pretty too.

||| Stream: “Michigan”

||| Download: “Prologue,” in its entirety, (for two weeks starting today) CORRECTED, it’s in perpetuity from the Milk Carton Kids’ website.

||| Live: The Milk Carton Kids play Aug. 13 at McCabe’s.