Pygmalion cover

Pygmalion

Released

The final album from Slowdive’s original run was easily its most abstract and cryptic, with the cover art alone signaling a shift from moody psychedelia verging on goth towards the kind of uninterpretable signs more familiar from contemporary releases by Aphex Twin among others. Not that the band itself had gone all electronic, but from the spare opening track “Rutti,” itself a quiet nod to the Durutti Column, Slowdive here transformed their songs into focused, unusual creations, the vast washes of earlier work turned into calm meditations and soft arcs of feedback on tracks like “Crazy for You” and “Blue Skied an’ Clear.”

Ned Raggett

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