In the end The Only Ones who matter are those who seek to either build up your own dreams and those willing to help you through the darkest hours, anything else is cannon fodder for the masses who seek to deride your accomplishments and who take pleasure in their apathy.

For those who actively keep a look out for the kids whose picture adorns the sides of milk cartons, they are the ones to have on your side as we enter a new decade of music produced, the simple pleasure of a song that captures the best of what has been and which paves the way for time ahead, introspection, speculation and uncontainable.

The critically acclaimed duo, who founded the Milk Carton Kids in 2011, see out the decade with a plush vibe, serenity calling from the jaws of their breakthrough release and the push to the place where songs such as I Meant Every Word I Said and As The Moon Starts To Rise are seen as moments in which the heartfelt is merged with the extraordinary statement.

It is in the extraordinary that we find those who speak for us, who seem to possess the intimate knowledge of our heart without even having made our acquaintance, let alone delved headlong in to asking us the deeply personal questions in which they can find a place of common ground.

As songs such as I’ll Be Gone, My Name Is Ana, About The Size Of A Pixel and I Was Alive make their way into the listener’s sphere of acceptance and longing, so too does the pleasure of being part of a movement begin to take shape; almost a decade in the making, The Milk Carton Kids have seized the moment and the ether to give themselves the point in which to display that The Only Ones who matter are the ones who care about you.

A set of songs that frame the hunt for ethereal in the previously encountered Folk tradition, The Only Ones who truly matter is in actual fact all who live and have dreams on this shared planet of ours, and The Milk Carton Kids exemplify that belief.

The Milk Carton Kids’ The Only Ones is out now.

Ian D. Hall