© Sebastian Garraway

The South London six-piece TAPIR! – Ike Gray (vocals/guitar), Will McCrossan (keys/drum machine), Tom Rogers-Coltman (guitar/saxophone), Ronnie Longfellow (bass), Emily Hubbard (cornet/synth) and Wilf Cartwright (drums/cello) – describe Tapir! as a ‘boiling together’ of different mediums: at once musical, theatrical, mythological, artistic, collaborative, narrative-led and, above all, something to be enjoyed and shared.

„The Pilgrim, Their God and the King of My Decrepit Mountain“ follows a three-act structure – released by Heavenly Recordings as three four-track EPs – telling the story of a solitary traveller, an ambiguous red creature known as The Pilgrim, on a journey across a mythical landscape of eerie forests, stormy seas and unholy mountains populated by beasts, injured birds and idealised eidolons. A fantastical offbeat fable carried along by Gray’s crisp, heartfelt vocals and the band’s instinctive, idiosyncratic melodies, the project at times feels like the musical equivalent of the paintings of Henry Darger, Henri Rousseau or Philip Guston.

Gray and McCrossan formed Tapir! in 2019 and after playing just one show at their beloved George Tavern, East London, the UK soon went into lockdown, forcing them to continue the project online, developing songs that combined off-kilter acoustic guitar and Randy Newman-esque storytelling with the reliable propulsion of their Elektron drum machine. What was to become the world and storyline of The Pilgrim, Their God and the King of My Decrepit Mountain would be pieced together gradually over the next year or with help from the art collective My Life is Big. Similarly the band would slowly recruit more members – and more and more friends to help build The Pilgrim’s world, its costumes and its sets – as the national lockdown lifted.

With The Pilgrim, Their God and the King of My Decrepit Mountain, Tapir! have proven they are more than technically adept at transporting the listener to another realm. You could read the whole album as being an escape from the trappings of the modern material world, a sidestep into a pre-industrial, pre-internet wonderland where creativity and community reign supreme. The narrator of ‘My God’ might suggest to us ‘Maybe it was Maybelline that put you at a loss/That’s my God’, but for Tapir! it is imagination itself that is king.