Since the February release of Pinegrove’s incredible Cardinal – which landed right at the top of our list of 2016’s best rock albums – more and more fans have been posting pictures of the record’s minimalist cover art inked into their skin. The image: two square outlines intersecting. Many people have taken many different things from these two squares, but in a recent interview with UK blog Gold Flake Paint, Pinegrove frontman Evan Stephens Hall finally revealed his intentions behind the simplistic artwork, and what it means to him, while also discussing creativity as a whole.
On the personal relevance of the squares, he described the squares as an introductory letter:
“I sort of imagined that square number one in the lower left-hand side is a letter that I’m writing and then the second squares shows that I’m sending it off and my words are traveling. George Saunders, who is a writer I like a lot, talked in an interview about how he’s a very shy person but he was really attracted to the idea of having his writing arrive before he did so that he could make an impression from the comfort of his own home and then once people had decided that they already like him, then he can meet them.”
He then goes on to describe the way that the square can also represent his desire to apologize to people he may have represented in a negative light in his songs, and the importance of condensing something with a lot of meaning into something simpler.
Check out the full interview here, and watch an absolutely beautiful acoustic version of the track “Waveform” below (how about that falsetto?!).
