The 1960s continue to be pop music’s most cannibalized decade. Whether it’s white Englishwomen updating American girl-group pop, Brooklyn indie bands revisiting the Beach Boys or the Rolling Stones, or hip-hop producers crate-digging through the endless hooks and breaks to be lifted from Blue Note and Stax, the 1960s remain a gold mine for musical inspiration and appropriation, for better and worse. With its new album “Casting Shadows,” the Jersey City quartet the Black Hollies isn’t the first — or even the 901st — outfit to mine the era’s pioneering output, but it does nail the sound and attitude of one of the earlier entries of ’60s memorabilia: the vaunted “Nuggets” compilation — what some call the blueprint for garage rock.

With its warbling vocal reverb, random fade-ins and fade-outs of songs, whirling sitar lines, raga-influenced melodies, and buzzing guitar hooks, “Casting Shadows” captures the Nehru-jacket and sweaty-club vibe of the bygone rock era with startling sincerity. Former Rye Coalition guitarists Herb Wiley and Jon Gonnelli fire punchy, trebly riffs through songs such as “Paisley Pattern Ground,” “That Little Girl,” and “If You Won’t Let Go.” Drummer Nick Ferrante moves from garage-rock stomp and groove on “Whispers in the Forest” to the popcorn rustle of wood block ripples in “The Autumn Chateau.”

Throughout the album, the band’s songwriting bassist-vocalist, Justin Angelo Morey, sounds as if he just tuned in and turned on at the Electric Circus and is trying to explain what his third eye saw. “Searching high and low everywhere we go,” he sing-speaks in the bubbling echo-chamber rock of “Under a Winter’s Spell,” before sighing, “Doesn’t seem to be going well.”

But “Casting Shadows” is not merely the product of a talented retro act, nor the nostalgic appropriation of this year’s model. The Black Hollies mostly refrain from knowing allusions or winks at the time period, opting instead for a serious, artful take on the music from this frequently over-romanticized era.

And well the band should. The two-LP “Nuggets” compilation was released by Elektra Records in 1972, and was co-organized by the writer and Patti Smith Group guitarist Lenny Kaye. It focused on American bands between 1965 and 1968, such as the Standells, the Seeds, Count Five, and other generally forgotten acts. But “Nuggets” wasn’t just the model for scruffy do-it-yourself startups and advocates of out-of-print LPs; it was also a finely tuned peek into the music being made almost exclusively by draft-age Americans as the country’s involvement in Vietnam progressed from simple escalation to riotous confrontations in our cities’ streets. Yes, big-name acts also captured this time in lyrics and attitude, but so many more regional acts — most of whom never appeared on Top 40 radio — smelted a sound that captured the time in much more immediate eruptions.

This was music made by young people who had no idea what the next day would bring. With “Casting Shadows,” the Black Hollies offer their own jittery, basement-band take on stylish carpe diem rock. And the band takes nothing for granted: Ten songs fly by in a little more than 35 minutes. No filler, no wasted motion, no in-jokes — just songs about girls, talking to girls, wanting to see a particular girl again, being fascinated and flummoxed by the world, and trying to figure out just what the hell is going on. Some pressing matters, regardless of the decade, never change.