Pinegrove, Stephen Steinbrink

On “Old Friends,” the opening track of last year’s LP Cardinal, songwriter and frontman Evan Stephens Hall, who has been spending his afternoons with the shades drawn, dispiritedly wonders, “How come every outcome is such a comedown?” Hailing from Montclair, New Jersey, a small town just outside of Newark, Pinegrove is a six-piece (though they sometimes play with a pared-down lineup) that’s channeling a lot of things simultaneously: the morose-but-shiny pop of the Shins, Wilco-esque alt-country, Pavement’s amiably angular post-rock. The album closes its loose narrative bookend with “New Friends,” which worries that the old friends from that earlier song have been further alienated, so Hall decides he’ll just start over again: “What’s the worst that could happen?”