Pinegrove

Pinegrove started in Montclair, New Jersey, in 2010, when singer-songwriter Evan Stephens Hall teamed up with drummer Zack Levine, and they built a sound that sits somewhere between alt-country and emo: banjo and pedal steel twanging behind songs so wordy and earnest they read like diary entries. The name comes from a row of pines on a nature reserve at Kenyon College, where Hall went to school.

The early years were DIY all the way, self-released records like the 2012 debut Meridian and a lot of house shows. Run for Cover signed them and collected the early work as Everything So Far in 2015, and Cardinal, in 2016, was the breakthrough, landing on critics' year-end top-ten lists and winning a fiercely loyal following who call themselves Pinenuts. After they recorded Skylight, a person Hall had toured with accused him of sexual coercion, and the band stepped away for a year; the album came out independently in 2018 and the tours that followed sold out.

Rough Trade signed them next. Marigold arrived in 2020 with "Phase", a warm, rolling tune that swells like a sunrise, and 11:11 came in 2022. When Levine left in 2023, the band announced a hiatus. Along the way they became known for square-shaped artwork, the ampersand on their merch and support for progressive causes.

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