Marigold by Pinegrove

Marigold, Pinegrove's fourth studio album, came out on Rough Trade on January 17, 2020, their first full-length for the label after signing in 2019. Like Skylight before it, it was recorded and mixed at Amperland, the rural farmhouse in upstate New York the band was living in, and you can hear the room in it: unhurried, creaky, lit by a porch light. Frontman Evan Stephens Hall produced it with guitarist Sam Skinner.

The band that started out in Montclair, New Jersey, in 2010 has always sat somewhere between alt-country and emo, and here the country half gets the bigger say. Nick Levine's pedal steel and Josh Marré's lap steel and resonator guitar drift through the corners, Zack Levine and bassist Megan Benavente keep the pulse soft but steady, and Hall sings in his quiet, knotted way, the literary streak in his writing being exactly what keeps the fans who call themselves Pinenuts coming back.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.