Alan Sparhawk (Low)

They were part of a group of bands in the really early ’90s—My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Ride, Moose—and those first Slowdive records were right in the wheelhouse. Reverbed-out, cascading guitars and distant, female-male voices, in kinship with what My Bloody Valentine were doing. Even though it was airy and ethereal, it was also still very loud. In England, Slowdive were successful somewhat, but in America they started gaining cult status even through the late ’90s. There was definitely a time when this stuff was happening, but they transcended that.

Pygmalion was this attempt to break free from some of what they had already been doing. Some of the mystique of course is that they disappeared a little bit after that. They had this weird mythical life where, OK, they had this thing, and they tried to shift, and the sheer process of trying to find new ground buried them. How noble, you know? We identified early on with their story of having this very distinct thing—just who they were, the setup, the tone—and then with Pygmalion the fact that they were trying to push forward is, at least in our book, pretty cool. We’ve toured with them a few times since they got back together, and there were a couple shows where they just blew the ceiling off. It was exhilarating.

James Graham (The Twilight Sad)

There was something about their music that struck a bigger chord with me than some of the other bands from around that time. Something about the way Neil and Rachel’s vocals blended that drew me in more, something more personal about the songwriting and singing that made them my favourite noisy guitar band around that time. The vocals didn’t feel as distant to me and felt closer as I could hear the story of the song.

They were a little more cinematic as well, their guitars were loud but it felt different. Finding out that they were dropped a week after Pygmalion was released broke my heart a wee bit. To me it was such a brave record to release, sparse/beautiful/forward-thinking but weird and dark in all the best ways. Everything you would want one of your favorite bands to do, to take their music somewhere new and even challenging at times but still be the band you fell in love with. I finally got to see them play last year for the first time and even though sciatica in my lower back tried to keep me away the one time I’ve been in town when they have, I stood up the back of the room hanging on to a barrier with a big smile on my miserable face even though I was in agony.

George Clarke (Deafheaven)

By the time I was 21 and we were putting Deafheaven together, Slowdive were still in heavy rotation and from them, we just combined the two words. I just thought that it looked cool. We used to present our logo as one word in all lowercase, and that served as a small homage to them.

What I like to think about with Pygmalion is them kind of being fed up in a way. They had this explosion with their last record, and that can be very tiring. I think that answering that by completely deconstructing your sound is a really cool thing to do. You would expect artists typically to go in a more accessible direction, and they absolutely didn’t. I can very easily envision going into a studio and being like, “I just want to tear all this apart and focus on atmosphere and focus on electronic percussion and just get as far away from what we were doing as possible because you know, I’m tired of being mixed up in it all.” And then to disband right afterwards, it’s a very bold statement.

A few years back we had a chance to do a festival circuit with them and we were able to become friends. I’ve spilled my heart to them once or twice about what they mean to me, and they’ve always taken it with a lot of grace. So for that, I’m very appreciative. Not only are they a special band, but they’re one that is very self-aware and understands the permanence of this whole thing and are very consistent with what they do. I think it’s admirable.