Releases
PINEGROVE - MARIGOLD INDIE EXCL LP / LP / CD IN STORES JAN 17
Pinegrove have revealed plans for their new album, Marigold, released on Rough Trade Records
January 17th, 2020.
The band quietly released the album’s first single, “Moment”, in August and Marigold has been eagerly
awaited by the band’s dedicated and rapidly expanding fanbase ever since.
Details of its release come just days after Pinegrove wrapped a coast-to-coast tour of North America -
performing to sold out theatres in front of their largest audiences to date, including stops in Vancouver,
Toronto and Montreal.
Marigold marks their debut album for Rough Trade Records and offers what leader Evan Stephens Hall
calls a “heart-first” perspective. The album begins with a breath and ends with a shimmering exhalation.
In between is an urgent, multivalent meditation – and an expanded take on the blend of alt-country, indie
rock and cerebral humanism that’s inspired the band’s ardent fan community. Those familiar with
Pinegrove will recognize signature elements of the band’s sound: literary yet conversational lyrics,
geometrically interlocking guitars, the dynamic shifting shadows of rhythm and structure.
Formed in 2010 in Montclair, NJ by childhood friends Evan and drummer Zack Levine, Pinegrove have
released three previous albums – Everything So Far (2015), Cardinal (2016) and Skylight (2018) – to
massive critical acclaim, garnering them a widespread and devoted listenership.
Hall named the band after a “beautiful and regulated, yet natural and messy” grid of pine trees on his
college grounds. ‘The Pinegrove’ was a place of introspection, repose and spiritual serenity, and a place
he had established to be creatively fertile. That influence – the peace found in nature and contemplation -
is a theme in his songwriting.
While there is room for ambiguity in Evan’s hypnotic storytelling, its thesis is anchored as always in
radical empathy. This is music that makes a humble yet confident case for inclusiveness and community,
for tenderness and patience in a world that sometimes seems to have other plans. “This is a lifelong
project,” Zack says, “We’re always thinking about how to be better humans and humanists. It’s about how
to keep going, and to respond to the world as it is right now.”
“Pinegrove (recall) some of the most consistently likable rock bands of the past 20 years in their most
easy going phases: There’s the rootsy shamble of early Wilco, the wiggly guitar solos and general
guilelessness of pre-prog Built to Spill. But beneath the amiable surface is an intense work about one of
the most important things imaginable: how to make our friendships really matter.” – Pitchfork
“There’s a confessional quality to the songs of Pinegrove that feels reassuring. The problems that swirl
around Evan Stephens Hall’s head feel universal.” – NPR
Though Marigold was recorded in the same space as 2018’s Skylight—Amperland, the living-roomturned-
studio in the house Evan shares with multi-instrumentalist Nick Levine in rural upstate New York—
the process was markedly different. The band took their time isolating instruments and reaching for a
more high fidelity result. Marigold is designed to sound cleaner, simplified, immediate.
Without the extra noise, Evan hopes the songs can be “more emotionally direct.” He began writing from
“a place of patience,” and the songs became in part about living in that space, about diligently
documenting resolution’s long arc. This is music carved from the earnest tradition of artistic inquiry: a
humble, wide eyed embrace of mystery and beauty in equal measure. It is music that is comfortable
walking the path toward self discovery.
Zack describes Pinegrove as a constellation of “soulmates.” At 30 years old, Zack and Evan have known
each other for 25 years and been playing music together for twenty, communicating via a “telepathic
musical connection.” Nearly everyone they work with are friends and collaborators from way back.
Marigold features Evan, Zack, Nick, as well as Josh Marre (who, outside of his usual guitar duties,
doubles on bass for this record), Sam Skinner, Nandi Rose, Evan’s dad Doug Hall, and Zack & Nick’s
dad Mike Levine. Sam also engineered and co-produced the record, as he has on every Pinegrove
recording since 2015.
Selections:
Dotted Line
Phase
Spiral
Endless
The Alarmist
Alcove
No Drugs
Neighbor
Moment
Marigold
Hairpin
