“Pygmalion” as Slowdive’s bummer ambient masterpiece

slowdive
Slowdive at the Royale, 10/26/2014

A little Thanksgiving detour.

This isn’t apropos of anything really, but I think Pygmalion is probably Slowdive’s best record. The Reading-based quintet are one of the lynchpins of the Creation Records shoegaze heyday, largely thanks to their 1993 sophomore LP Souvlaki, which is widely regarded as an unimpeachable classic of the genre. I can’t argue with that. Souvlaki is certainly one of shoegaze’s purest, finest moments. Dreamy vocals, shimmering guitars routed through miles of effects pedals and a woozy, romantic atmosphere with flare-ups of muscular distortion – it’s all here and matched with impeccable songwriting and some cutting lyrics. I question the emotional sincerity of anyone who isn’t at least a little heartbroken each time they hear “Dagger.” I do think, though, that by a hair, Slowdive’s finest moment would be what came next. 

Arriving two years later, and followed promptly by the band’s dissolution, Pygmalion excels by doing precisely the opposite of the expected. The record’s eerie, lonely ambiance grants its nine songs plenty of space to breath, expand and resonate. Opener “Rutti” extends to the 10-minute mark, opening with an extended passage of band co-leader Neil Halstead’s reverbed voice and guitar before unfolding into a stately, minimalist epic. It sets the tone for a record that sounds like it’s in an entirely different universe than any of Slowdive’s previous work, while still maintaining the poignancy and ear for sonic detail that made them so special in the first place. At the risk of sounding trite, it’s the first post-shoegaze record.

As a Souvlaki acolyte in high school, it took an extended minute for Pygmalion to click with me. It wasn’t really until last November that the record truly made its impact; the definition of a grower I suppose. I was spending a lot of time walking back and forth from a Northeastern campus apartment to the Boston Public Library under grey skies and chilling wind, sinking myself into a research project involving vintage newspapers and lamenting a romance that had failed to take flight. I can’t imagine a much better soundtrack for such a time than Pygmalion. With autumn decaying gradually into winter and lonesome introspectiveness dominating one’s thoughts, the sparse intangibility of these songs makes a lot of sense.

While Souvlaki dealt in structurally conventional songs, Pygmalion casts the idea of verse/chorus aside in favor of impressionistic excursions. “Crazy For You” manages to be an incredibly affecting six minutes by doing little more than repeating its quasi-titular mantra over and over again with a sad, hazy sense of longing. “Souvlaki Space Station” may bear the title, but “Trellisaze” with its ping-ponging electronic satellites and vocal detritus comprise the band’s most truly interstellar-sounding piece of work. “Miranda” and “J’s Heaven” obscure Rachel Goswell’s otherworldly-beautiful voice and Halstead’s gentle croon, respectively, under hypnotic layers of delay and reverb effects that render their words unintelligible and cast them as textural elements to the skeletal framework of the songs. It’s only toward the end of the record that a more traditional sense of songwriting begins to materialize. Goswell’s gorgeously mournful ballad in miniature, “Visions of La,” leaves one grasping for more at a scant two minutes, but leads beautifully into the pastoral extended duet of “Blue Skied an’ Clear.”

The record concludes with “All of Us,” a Halstead acoustic number that recalls the downer closing note of “Dagger,” and juxtaposing the two songs lends Pygmalion and its predecessor a sense of structural duality that also applies to the records’ sounds. Souvlaki was rightfully hailed as a shoegaze masterpiece, but its followup sought to be something different, something further, without losing the band’s heart. It succeeded exceptionally well in that regard, but is frequently overlooked in favor of its predecessor’s more accessible merits. Pygmalion celebrated its 20th anniversary this year without much fanfare, but while it doesn’t strike me as a piece of work that begs for a celebratory tour, perhaps it is time for it to earn a bit of reappraisal.