Premiere: Milk Carton Kids’ ‘Poison Tree’ video tackles loneliness

Los Angeles’ Milk Carton Kids — Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan — have stepped out from behind the curtain, so to speak, and appear for the first time on camera in one of their music videos, “Poison Tree,” from their new album, “Monterey,” which arrives today.

Calendar premieres the Mike Venezia-directed video for the Kids’ poignant song about heartbreak that takes place little by little and lives that become dulled one hurt at a time.

Actor Kristopher McAfee plays a shopping mall security guard whose solitary existence is buoyed in a surprising way by memories of a love from his younger days. Fittingly, the video was shot at Eagle Rock Plaza in the duo’s hometown.

Pattengale and Ryan emphasize their Simon & Garfunkel roots in the new album, which taps some of the same sense of wistful reflection of the latter’s folksy 1966 album “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme,” and parts of 1968’s “Bookends.”

It’s been an auspicious couple of years since the 2013 release of their previous album, “The Ash & Clay.” Pattengale and Ryan attracted the attention of Americana music superstar producer T Bone Burnett and were invited to be part of his concert “Another Day, Another Time: Celebrating the Music of Inside Llewyn Davis” that grew out of the Coen brothers film set in New York’s folk music scene of the early 1960s.

“The Ash & Clay” earned the Milk Carton Kids a folk music album Grammy nomination and the duo was named group of the year at the 2014 Americana Music Awards.

Their 2015 summer-fall tour will bring them back to Los Angeles for a show Oct. 1 at the Theater at Ace Hotel downtown.

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