With Lost Cause Lover Fool, the Milk Carton Kids struck the perfect balance between two-voices, two-guitars albums like Monterey and the experimental, full-band excursion that was All the Things That I Did and All the Things That I Didn’t Do. 

For studio album No. 8, the Kids—Joey Ryan and Kenneth Pattengale—remain mostly acoustic and continue to sing like a cross between the Everly Brothers and Simon & Garfunkel. But they wrap the nine tracks in spare, yet colorful, complements of banjo, mandolin, organ, electric guitar and save the quickest tempo for the ironically titled “Sad Song.” 

Other tunes are more wistful and languid. “Blue Water” opens the LP and immediately introduces a banjo and a child who’s all grown. 

“I know you worry all the time/I know you got my spinning mind/I take it one day at a time/everything will be all right,” Ryan sings. 

Later, in an all-time story song titled “A Friend Like You,” a two-person cross-country drive becomes a one-person cross-country drive as the narrator laments: “I’m gonna miss you the rest of my life.” 

It’s heavy stuff that somehow leaves the listener feeling comforted when it’s six minutes are over. It’s much the same for the 35 minutes of Lost Cause Lover Fool, which expands the Kids’ trademark sound but shouldn’t render these songs impossible to play live.