Just wanted to circle back and cap things off here.
Lots more info and resources are available at the Pitch-Accent Awareness Corner. Thanks again to everyone for helping me here instead of linking me there with an exasperated sigh 
Recap: the general advice for beginners here is to be aware that pitch-accent is a thing but refrain from letting it distract you too much - just imitate the audio examples. I think this makes sense.
My reasoning for taking a different route is that I’m returning to serious study after a decade-long stint as an “eternal intermediate.”
My plan this time is to find places where aspiring native speakers of Japanese or English who want to learn the other language can chat and exchange know-how on a casual basis. To that end I’m trying to learn grammatical terms like 動詞 (verb) so that I can talk about grammar in Japanese.
It seemed like a good idea to learn a bit more about pitch-accent while I was at it.