On a hot Michigan afternoon in September, 2017, Evan Stephens Hall was onstage at a music festival, tuning his guitar and thinking about his sunglasses. “I feel like it’s unfortunate that I have to wear sunglasses,” he said, lifting them to squint at the sun and at the crowd. “Because the eyes are the best way to let a person know that you mean it.” He was joking, sort of. Hall, who is thirty, is the singer and songwriter for Pinegrove, an indie-rock band that was then assembling an unusually zealous group of fans—Pinenuts, they sometimes called themselves, with self-deprecating sincerity. There is something embarrassing about loving a band enough to give yourself a nickname, just as there is something embarrassing about singing earnest songs full of romantic complaints. “Just trust me—I mean it,” Hall said, with a sheepish smile. Then he led his band through “Visiting,” which seems to chronicle a long-distance entanglement (“I’m spectral for days on end, these days / With thoughts about visiting”), and which drives toward a fervent expression of confusion:

But the truth is

I don’t know what

I thought I knew it.

Pinegrove turns lyrics such as these into rousing and sometimes twangy rock songs, which fail to be cool in two different ways: they are equally as likely to elicit cringes from listeners who value emotional restraint as they are from those who demand fashionable innovation. And yet Pinegrove harnesses, perhaps more effectively than any other band of its era, the power of a well-turned musical confession. This music fits, loosely, into the category of emo, which began, in the nineteen-eighties, as a passionate offshoot of hardcore punk, and expanded to include a universe of bands that were simultaneously scrappy and sentimental. In the two-thousands, “emo” often denoted angsty and theatrical hard-rock bands like Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance, which briefly dominated MTV and the nation’s high schools. But by the twenty-tens, when Pinegrove emerged, there was no sense in worrying about who would be the next Fall Out Boy; with hip-hop ascendant and MTV essentially dead, it seemed clear that there wouldn’t be one. The spirit of emo was instead nurtured online and at do-it-yourself house shows, where the financial stakes were low. Pinegrove built a following in basements—first in Hall’s home town of Montclair, New Jersey, and then farther afield. After a few years, Hall noticed that audiences were singing along. The band graduated from basements to clubs and got a contract with an independent record label, called Run for Cover. Pinegrove’s breakthrough album, “Cardinal,” released in 2016, contained “Visiting” and seven more songs that were similarly plaintive, and similarly addictive.

By the time Hall played that festival in Michigan, the Pinegrove cult was growing both more obsessive and less exclusive. An article in Vice hailed “Cardinal” as “a perfect album.” The band was selling out midsize clubs nationwide, playing shows that were starting to feel vaguely religious. Fans were getting Pinegrove tattoos—often an outline of interlocking squares, like those on the cover of “Cardinal.” (The actress Kristen Stewart has a Pinegrove tattoo.) After years of living with his parents, Hall had rented a house in rural upstate New York, with a big living room, where the band recorded an elegant and folksy new album, “Skylight.” Pinegrove seemed poised to enlarge its audience significantly, winning over grownup listeners who were drawn in by Hall’s achy sincerity, even if they would never dream of attending a basement emo show.

On November 21, 2017, about two months after the Michigan concert, Hall wrote a Facebook post that changed the way people viewed him and his music. He explained that he had been “accused of sexual coercion,” by a woman with whom he had had a brief relationship. His post contained nearly eight hundred words, but few details. The accusation itself was not made public, and neither was the identity of the accuser; Hall said that he was withholding the full story out of respect for her privacy. He did not admit or deny guilt, nor did he explain what “sexual coercion” entailed, except in negative terms: “i absolutely never threatened her, i never leveraged anything against her.” Hall acknowledged his “privilege as a man” and as a “recognized performer,” and wrote, “i am so sorry.” But his penitence seemed mixed with confusion, and perhaps frustration:

i believed all of our decisions to be based in love. still, i am coming to terms with the fact that i monumentally misread the situation. i am trying earnestly to follow this line as deeply as it goes to reflect on all of the things i could have done, and can do, better.

Hall announced that he would be “taking some time off.” Pinegrove cancelled its upcoming tour dates and the planned release of “Skylight,” and Hall vanished from social media.

A different kind of band might have had partisans rushing to defend their hero, but many Pinenuts, after registering their shock and anger, took a more ambivalent position, trying to balance their fandom with their concern for victims of sexual abuse. The power of Hall’s music derived in part from his ability to persuade listeners to trust him. Just as hip-hop fans may expect their favorite rappers to be as tough as they say they are, many Pinenuts wanted Hall to be as thoughtful and sensitive as the narrator of the songs they loved.

A few musicians from the scene condemned Hall’s statement, or his character; one compared him to the Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Many more were conspicuously silent. A fan posted a melancholy plea on Twitter:

all I want for christmas is a clear understanding of the sexual coercion accusations toward evan stephens hall with considerate representation of the victim’s voice and either a pinegrove reunion tour or a pinegrove tattoo removal kit dependent on aforementioned circumstances ok?

In September, 2018, Hall resurfaced. He told the music site Pitchfork that, at the request of his accuser, he had gone a full year without touring. A couple of months later, the band launched a comeback tour, with a concert in Montclair and another in Brooklyn, where Hall only alluded to the topic on everyone’s mind. “This has been a really challenging year,” he said. The band split with its label—a mutual decision, both sides maintained—and released “Skylight” independently. Online, plenty of people wondered why, in a world with no shortage of earnest indie bands, it made sense to support one with a singer accused of sexual misbehavior. But many Pinenuts returned, filling up bigger venues than ever before.