Pygmalion (studio album) by Slowdive

From teague 09/01/2021 16:34

Pygmalion sounds like if they tried to expand the song Souvlaki Space Station to a full album. The result is quite pleasant and stellar.

From Cargusbralem 06/14/2019 00:55

It is difficult to make a comparison between this and Souvlaki. Souvlaki is a standard collection of great shoegaze songs, while the enigmatic Pygmalion focuses more on creating haunting, and very spacy soundscapes with an even denser reverb effect on everything most of the time. It's like a black hole swallowed Souvlaki (space station?) and here we are on another dimension, lost in Pygmalion. Luckily, the last couple of tracks offer us a ticket back home, just when we thought our oxygen tanks were depleted.

Anyway that's what I felt while listening to this album, and I'm giving it a 7 (good album).

This rating applies to the triple-disc version. Favourite tracks: Rutti, Crazy For You (both versions), Blue Skied An' Clear (both versions), Watch Me, Ambient Theme Part II.

From JulianR 05/02/2018 04:18

I really didnt like this album when I first discovered shoegaze, and slowdive. Of course, this was also before I discovered Talk Talk, Eno, and Aphex Twin, who seem like the closest influences of this music. Upon beginning to listen to it for the first time in a few years, the Talk Talk similarity struck me most readily. The way that little drum machine shaker sound comes in, it feels like something right off of Laughing Stock. More towards the middle of the album, there is a certain SAW II influence at play for sure. And of course overarching is Eno, but more in approach than direct sound. It is still unmistakably Slowdive, but so much more. Or maybe more accurately, so much less...

Though the album is very good as a whole, a lot of the area from tracks 3-7 can feel a little dreary or meandering, in the way that bad ambient can be. Not to say that it is bad, it just isnt as good as the more structured first and last two tracks.

80/100 (Good)

While nearly all Slowdive fans adore the previous LP Souvlaki, this next album Pygmalion is where fans seem to find no easy middle ground. Pygmalion is either the fan's favorite or is (mistakenly) considered a totally failed album, such is its departure from the group's previous work. Their record label (Creation) delayed the record's release and promptly dumped the group from the roster immediately after finally releasing it. (For me it is my favorite.)

Whereas their previous work used dozens (hundreds?) of guitar effects pedals, there the effects are more often saved for experimental vocal treatments, particularly Rachel Goswell's. The record opens with a strummed guitar chord slowy unfolding into a ten-minute opus that feels like an orbit. And with each next song, the mood gets hazier and more out of focus, eventually the tide turns and wraps back into focus by the final song. You may drift in and out of your body or merge with your couch. What a masterpiece.

From Komorebi-D 12/26/2016 06:31

If you're coming off Souvlaki, Just For A Day or both, don't be expecting Pygmalion to keep its nose to the grindstone. This isn't so much a shoegaze album as it is a Post-Rock and an ambient one. Once you get past Crazy For You, the whole paradigm shifts and shit goes full Spiderland meets 80's Eno or Aphex Twin. If you're a lover of Ambient, Post-Rock and/or Shoegaze albums - just like me - you'll probably love this album. It acts as an almost frightening document to the year shoegaze was considered to be a dying art (the very same Pygmalion was released), as well as an brilliant example (if not an underrated one) of post-rock pre-F# A# Infinity.

In terms of Slwodive's body of work itself; I'd have to rank this in second place.

From HoldenM 05/25/2015 01:02

To me, this is so clearly Slowdive's masterpiece. It's potent, and has a timelessness to it. If I had heard this, and someone had told me it came out today, I could totally believe that. There are albums from ten years ago that don't hold up as well as this breezy, haunting collection of songs.

From johnner 02/06/2014 15:59

I bought this lp when it came out. I thought it was great but no one else wanted to know - glad it's been reappraised and now seen to be the masterpiece it always was.

Better than Souvlaki. And *that* album was pretty damn awesome as well.

From SingingPeasant96 06/17/2013 09:25

Now, This is my favourite ambient album.