The new EP casts their fiction in terms more familiar from our own reality, while pushing their musical horizons to a delightfully grand scale.

Almost a year on from the release of Tapir!’s last new music, people have been speculating on the progress of their mysterious pilgrim. It was captured initially on EP ‘Act 1’ and gas since then only been glimpsed fleetingly: at live shows; among a rain-soaked choir at Devil’s Dyke; communing on the beach with some femme Jesus. ‘Act 2,’ released today, is here to answer a few of our questions. As with its predecessor, it consists of four tracks, features a spoken introduction from Little Wings, and unfolds into an indie rock odyssey adorned by several spikily rolling guitars, Emily Hubbard’s horn flourishes and lyrics that flit between the wide-eyed and the world-weary. For ‘Act 2,’ the story moves from land to water, where our pilgrim rides a broken ark over 3/4 waves upon a fleshed out musical backdrop complimented by contributions from South London duo Lilo. It also finds itself more closely entwined with concerns that crop up in our own reality.

The Tapir! project distinguishes itself for its mythological dressing, conveyed across a multidisciplinary output. It can feel playfully shoestring, as when the band shuffle on stage, blinded by oversized papier-mâché masks. At times, however, with a little bit of imaginative investment by the audience, it can form into a coherent and meaningful imaginary world, reflecting our own while transporting us away from it. Having set the scene in ‘Act 1’, it now feels as though ‘Act 2’ is blurring that fantasy world back into our own. Will McCrossan from the band points out that the geography of this new phase is established with seaside field recordings and, “Two waltzes, which add to that feeling of riding the waves on the sea.”  Yet the lyrics that weave a narrative into this setting seem to fall much closer to home than those we have heard before (with the exception of the ambivalently materialistic ‘My God’). By singer Ike Gray’s admission, the three songs with lyrics draw on canonical texts concerned with life on Earth, “‘Eidolon’ being stolen from a Walt Whitman poem, ‘Gymnopédie’ being stolen from Erik Satie and ‘Broken Ark’ being stolen from the Bible.” These reference points anchor us in the real world (and its existing mythos), shifting the focus of the music towards reflection on our own lives, rather than escape to the band’s fiction.

‘Gymnopédie’ in particular resonates with a distinctly urban experience of early adulthood in overpriced flats with “rooms filled with mice” and “ breadcrumbs in the bedsheets.” Its commentary on the pilgrim’s world situates it within Christendom, parodying its Heaven and its Jesus as it asks whether our Messiah would be so venerable if we found out he had headlice. Indeed, the relation of the Pilgrim’s world to our own is further complicated by the video for this track, which casts Ash Kenazi as a kind of drag Jesus, who gives the Pilgrim the sacrament. The band explain that the video, “Takes the fictional narrative of the pilgrim and places it in the real world,” raising the question of where that world ends and their fictional world begins. Perhaps ‘Act 3’ will answer all of our remaining queries.

Musically, ‘Act 2’ chronicles two of the band’s live highlights. ‘Gymnopédie’ is perhaps the defining Tapir! song, gloriously elaborated here by the added layering of strings from cellist Wilfred Cartwright accompanied by Lilo’s Helen Dixon. Following that, closer ‘Eidolon’ is a beautifully intimate moment, led by twanging fingerpicked guitar and hushed vocals. As McCrossan reflects, “It’s like shutting the door on a raging storm.” Navigating troubled waters of our world and that of the pilgrim, ‘Act 2’ fleshes out the charming Tapir! sound with new confidence, while complicating the context for its narrative.