So far, 2016 has been a good year for indie-pop-punk hybrids. Earlier this month Philadelphia’s Modern Baseball released one of the best albums to come from four dudes in a traditional punk formation in the last decade, just last week Toronto’s PUP did the same, and back in February, Pinegrove—from Montclair, New Jersey—released their debut full-length Cardinal and everyone in America freaked out because it lands perfectly between early Wilco and pre-prog Built to Spill. Frontman Evan Stephens Hall has (not entirely seriously) described their sound as “if Virginia Woolf hallucinated the midpoint between math rock and Americana” or if Phil Elverum—the songwriter behind the Microphones and Mount Eerie—started a funk band. If you’d like another comparison, I think they sound like a more optimistic Manchester Orchestra. Like if you took I’m Like a Virgin Losing a Child out for pancakes on a nice day and it was like “Yeah, maybe, I guess things aren’t so bad.”
Pinegrove play the kind of openhearted indie that the early 00s fawned over, turning adult-high-school-nerds into celebrities, and awarding a Grammy to Death Cab for Cutie. Now we have Taylor Swift for that, but there are still a number of crazy good albums coming from bands like Pinegrove that should be treated as cornerstones, and Cardinal is full of all the sentiments you don’t know how much you need to hear until they sink in.
Videos by VICE
We’re premiering their tour video for “New Friends” below, which is about the very real phenomenon of looking around a room and suddenly realising that you know don’t know anybody in it. Or anybody at all, actually. Your old friends are gone, and you don’t know how to make new ones, because you are 26. “Steve’s in Germany / That’s it / I try to think of anyone else / No, yeah, that’s it / So I resolve to make new friends / I liked my old ones but I fucked up so I’ll start again”, Hall sings, somehow reading from the mid-20s journal I haven’t actually written yet, while avoiding the saccharine and ushering the phrase “tasteful banjo” back into 2016 lexicon.
Cardinal will be re-relased through Run For Cover on July 1, and Pinegrove will play their first UK shows on a European tour starting this summer. Find the full list of live dates below.
June 7 – Banquet Records, Kingston, UK (5pm)
June 8 – Rough Trade, Nottingham, UK (7pm)
June 9 – Rough Trade West, London, UK (6pm)
June 10 – Rise Music, Bristol, UK (6pm)
Sept 4 – End of the Road Festival, Larmer Tree Gardens, UK
Sept 5 – Gullivers, Manchester, UK
Sept 6 – Brudenell Social Club, Leeds, UK
Sept 7 – The Hug & Pint, Glasgow, UK
Sept 8 – Think Tank, Newcastle, UK
Sept 9 – Sunflower Lounge, Birmingham, UK
Sept 10 – Bestival, Isle of Wight, UK
Sept 11 – Joiners, Southampton, UK
Sept 12 – Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff, UK
Sept 13 – The Lexington, London, UK
Sept 15 – Green Door Store, Brighton, UK
Sept 16 – La Mécanique Ondulatoire, Paris, FR
Sept 17 – V11, Rotterdam, NL
Sept 18 – Sugar Factory, Amsterdam, NL
Sept 20 – Ideal Bar, Copenhagen, DK
Sept 23 – Maze Club, Berlin, DE
Sept 24 – Strom, Munich, DE
Sept 25 – Papiersaal, Zurich, CH
Sept 26 – Freakout Club, Bologna, IT
Sept 27 – Kalvingrad, Geneva, CH
Sept 28 – Bad Bonn, Dudingen, CH
Sept 29 – Underground 2, Cologne, DE
Sept 30 – Trix, Antwerp, BE
Oct 1 – Fighting Cocks, Kingston, UK
Oct 3 – Bodega, Nottingham, UK
Oct 4 – Studio 2, Liverpool, UK
Oct 5 – Limelight 2, Belfast, UK
Oct 6 – Roisin Dubh, Galway, IE
Oct 7 – Kasbah Social Club, Limerick, IE
Oct 8 – Whelan’s, Dublin, IE
