Tapir! on Religion, 2000s Indie, Community, and Masks

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London collective Tapir! made one of the year's best indie albums with the stunning The Pilgrim, Their God and the King of My Decrepit Mountain, a record that (and this is a huge compliment) wouldn't have been a smidge out of place on the Asthmatic Kitty roster circa the mid-2000s. They've put out two excellent singles since then—"Nail in a Wooden Trunk" and "Hallelujah Bruv"—and last month I got the chance to hop on a call with 1/2 of this six-person band: Vocalist/guitarist Ike Gray, bassist Ronnie Longfellow, and guitarist Tom Rogers-Coltman. It was a great chat, check it out:

Talk to me about the band's origins. You guys formed maybe a year before COVID really kicked off.
Ike: Me and [keyboard player Will McCrossan] started the writing songs together just before lockdown as a fun thing. We wanted to do narrative-driven songs, and a lot of them were very different to what we do now. We did one or two shows before lockdown as a four-piece, so the seeds were planted. Then we started playing with Tom, and it slowly developed over time, quite organically, into the album. After Emily joined, it was me, Ronnie, Will, and Emily living together and playing music at home.

Tom: Me and Ronnie played in a band called Dog together for quite a long time before Tapir!. Ike had played in another band before too.

Ike: I studied filmmaking at university, which was what I was more interested in beforehand. It's one of those typical stories, where music wasn't one of the things I thought I'd be spending most of my time doing. But it's how it happens sometimes. All of us have other interests outside of music, and we've tried to do it in a way that implements all of those interests, which has been which has been fun.

Tom: I moved here to study sound arts, and through that course at LCC I met a whole community of people playing in these bands, and that's how I eventually ended up meeting Ike, Ronnie, and Will. We still have an art collective that we were putting on nights with, doing poetry nights and workshops, and that all bled into the project as well. It was nice, having a community of people doing all sorts of different things and knowing a lot of very talented people. It made making stuff for the album, as well as the album itself, quite fun and easy. And it was a lot easier to do it ourselves as well. Yuri Shibuichi, who produced the album, was a good friend of ours before too. So recording was a much easier kind of thing to pursue than trying to find all those pieces.

It's quite ironic for a six-person band to essentially come together during a pandemic. Tell me more about how lockdown played a role in terms of gestating the band's creative spirit.
Ike: There were obviously a lot of negatives to that time, but when I look back, I feel like it was one of the most productive times of my life. I was fortunate enough not to have to worry about work, because I was furloughed on-and-off, so I had a lot of time to think and reflect—and it's quite hard to to find that time in life, sometimes, to have moments where you're left with your thoughts. Personally, it was a period of time where I spent a lot of time reflecting and making personal realizations, which is where a lot of the songs and concepts behind the music came from.

Tom: You could also spend so much time on your own personal practicing. The way me and Ike started writing together and sharing music was during one of the lockdowns. We'd both each made a song, but we didn't know each other that well at that point, so we individually sent our own songs to the mutual friend we had, and they were like, "Oh, you've both made songs revolving around clapping." And that's how we got linked up. With lockdown, you got into your respective holes and went out the other side. so there were loads of ideas to connect over. We probably developed more of personal styles just from spending so much time by ourselves.

Ike: It also encouraged people to come together in different ways. We actually made a group on Facebook that was all about making art. It was quite nice to have a space where people were sharing what they were making and asking people if they wanted to collaborate. We'd be like, "OK, maybe we can make a video," and we'd set projects for each other to do, send videos to each other, and put them together to make a little film. Sometimes, even in London. when you have those communities in real life, not everyone has the time to be in the same place. So when the world was put on hold, it meant that people could explore those things.

Ronnie: Also, during COVID, there were restrictions, so you couldn't do gigs or properly record music. So even if you had the urge to play music with people, there was no thinking about doing it as a proper thing—it was all just organic.

Ike: I don't know if this has anything to do with COVID, but when we started making music and recording it, there was a time where we were like,"Well, maybe we won't be a live band and do shows." We just love creating stuff and sharing it.

Was there any moment where you figured that, due to COVID, none of this was going to go anywhere in terms of public-facing releases?
Tom: We were lucky that there was no career before that anyway, so it was the start of a new chapter.

Ike: We've got friends who careers were just about to take off and had albums that were about to come out, and the whole thing stopped the ball rolling for so many people, which is awful. But we were just quite fortunate in that sense.

Talk to me more about how the sense of community contributed to the making of this record—which sounds as if it's full of ideas in a way which I don't usually get from indie records these days.
Ike: Because we were doing it ourselves for so long, it meant that we could have all of our friends involved. We found that it completely happens by chance, but in London, if you're fortunate enough, it's a lot easier to meet amazing people in communities. The more you collaborate, the better, and the more ideas come out of it. The last song on the album, we had a choir of 25 people. We went out to record the backing vocals on top of a hill, and it was the worst weather ever—a massive storm—and I felt awful, but it was actually such a unique moment, and very overwhelming and lovely. One of the overarching themes in the album is trying to find a sense of community, so it was a real realization that made a subconscious difference on the songs.

I feel like "scenes" tend to develop more organically over there than they do in, say, New York City. Is there some truth to that, do you think?
Ike: I think there definitely is. A big negative is that competition definitely comes into it. It's a shame, I don't really know why it happens. London's a weird place, because obviously it's the center of of the industry, but there are a lot of grassroots venues, and a lot of people move there to start bands. It's probably to do with space as well. I love the idea of garage bands, and you hear about these artists who are like, "Yeah, I've been playing music with this guy since we were 14, jamming out in the garage," and sometimes we're like, "Oh man, that sounds nice."

We're very fortunate, but you can complain a lot about about the issues in London and in the UK. There are a lot of people fighting for the grassroots venues, where there are opportunities and platforms for people to try stuff out and meet people. We've met a lot of friends that way.

Tom: I wouldn't say it's just London, though. We've met so many nice bands in Leeds or Manchester who all have their own vibe and collective mentality. But having so many people in a city like London, obviously you're gonna get collections of people with similar interests, going to the same venues, working the same jobs.

I noticed in some of your promo photos that you guys wear red-hooded masks. Tell me what went into about that aesthetic decision.
Ike: A lot of being pretentious, probably. [Laughs] Personally, I'm very shy, so there was an idea of trying to strip the ego from it. The, red heads were meant to represent the character of the pilgrim from the album, and the masks that we put on for headline shows are very much about the narrative side of the music. We made props, set pieces, and costumes for it, and the more shows we did, the more we developed it. Wearing the masks in press shots is actually super handy, because we don't all have to be there to take them. I don't think I'm in any of them, actually.

Your guys' music reminds me a lot about 2000s indie—the sound, the conceptual ambition. Again, it's something I don't see too many people taking on these days, certainly in the way that you all are. Would you count that time period as an influence for you guys?
Ike: It definitely is. The drive to create something that sounds super unique and new prevents you from not necessarily leaning into your inspirations or allowing yourself to make music that you enjoy listening to. We all grew up listening to a lot of those bands, and consciously or subconsciously, they have inspired us.

Tom: I think it also has something to do with the makeup of instruments and recording processes we were using. There was a ambition to combine acoustic instrumentation with a drum machine—which is a strange interaction in the first place, and not that far away from some of the stuff that was happening in that period you're talking about. Also, it was an album that was produced in a bedroom, essentially. That forces you into a certain way of presenting the music. It's got to be quite intimate, and you lean more into a sort of sound world rather than being a band being captured in this cool room with a bunch of mics. You build a sound world because that's the only option.

Ike: We were just using what we had. But, then again, the idea of going to a big studio and making something super polished also doesn't quite feel right. [Laughs]

Tell me about the "Gymnopédie" cover. It's such a familiar piece of music that it's almost a risk to weave it into something like this, but it fits really well.
Ike: It definitely was a risk. It came about as a lot of the things we do—a bit tongue-in-cheek, a bit of a joke, just from playing around on the guitar. It was one of the first songs I wrote during lockdown. Through lyricism and researching more about the history of the song, it turned it from something that would've been very on-the-nose to...a translation? That sounds a bit wank-y, doesn't it. [Laughs] It started off as a joke, and then it turned into something more. When we were recording and producing it, that's where it really came to life. If we just did a straight-up cover of the song, it would've come across a bit different.

Talk to me about working with Little Wings' Kyle Field on this album. What he does fits so well with what you guys do that it almost makes too much sense that he'd be a presence here.
Ike: I just reached out on Instagram. It had nothing to do with the album or anything, but during lockdown, I was listening to Explains a lot, so I sent him a clichéd fan message. But he's so sweet and lovely. When we started writing music, it was my first time taking it out of that place of phone recordings for me and my friends, and I was quite anxious and didn't know how I felt about it. I spoke to him about those things because a reason why I really connect to him as an artist is because of the way that he treats music. I've always really respected him.

I sent him some of the first recordings we did when we were constructing the album, because we were like, "Oh, we need a narrator." I reached out to Guy Garvey from Elbow first, but he didn't get back to me—but it worked out for the better, because I asked Kyle and he sent over a voice note, and then that was it.

There's a lot of stuff on this album gesturing towards religion—tell me more about that, as well as your thoughts on religion in general.
Ike: When you write—music, art, anything—it comes from a moment. A lot of those songs came during that time in in lockdown that were very reflective. I was brought up Christian, and I was spending that time trying to untangle from that relationship with religion or worship. It's not completely detached from any sense of belief, but that's where the idea of community comes in as well. I'm at the point where I find those very beliefs very interesting, and there's so much mythology and stories you can pull from. It's all about ideas.

Tell me about navigating financial situations in the post-COVID musical landscape. What's the deal with money for you guys?
Ike: I complain about it for far too long. [Laughs] I think it's hard for everyone, but it's definitely not the easiest time to be pursuing music—and it's a big priority for all of us and takes up a lot of time, but it isn't a full-time job. So it can be hard to navigate. The idea is that, maybe in two or three years time, we'll be in a place where you're more financially stable. We're very lucky to have a label funding our music and projects—but, I mean, there's six of us in the band, so [the money] doesn't go too too far. Going back to the idea of communities and grassroots, it seems to be the chosen few that are picked out from those communities—and, a lot of the time, it doesn't feel like a lot of money's put back into those spaces, which is a real issue. It enforces more of an individualistic attitude.

Tom: It's a constant finding of the balance between working enough that you can support yourself, but having enough time to work on your art. It's very difficult to find and any kind of stability, Everyone has their own individual way of making it work. Will works full-time as a piano tuner, and he's got perfect pitch, so when we go on tour he can come home and like he has this skill that isn't making music that does pay. Finding something like that is kind of the dream, isn't it?

I think a lot of people in creative industries are in the same spot right now. You find yourself doing multiple jobs at once, and they all feel full-time. It's a strange time to be trying to make money.
Ike: There's lots of poor people in the film industry, too —we're losing jobs left right and center. It's hard to find security.

It's a mess. I'm really hoping this is all just a phase, because all I can do is hope. If you get too pessimistic, that's hard to move on from, too.
Ike: I think positives come from those places as well. There's always a fear of being too pessimistic, but the more artists communicate to each other about those worries, there'll only be change through having those conversations. When people don't talk about this stuff—that's when it gets harder.