The Pilgrim, Their God and the King of My Decrepit Mountain is the debut album by British indie folk band Tapir!, released on 26 January 2024 through Heavenly Recordings. The album is divided into three acts: The Pilgrim, Their God, and The King of My Decrepit Mountain, of which the first two were released separately in May and August 2023, respectively. It received positive reviews from critics.
The Pilgrim, Their God and the King of My Decrepit Mountain
The Pilgrim, Their God and the King of My Decrepit Mountain received a score of 72 out of 100 on review aggregator Metacritic based on four critics' reviews, indicating "generally favorable" reception.[1]Mojo felt that "Tapir!'s considerable world-building skills impress, even if seven-minute closer 'Mountain Song' seems a little directionless".[4]AllMusic's Marcy Donelson described the album as "a character-driven musical adventure involving mythical landscapes, a quest, and a growing ensemble to accommodate its offbeat art-folk", writing that "with each act consisting of a similar intro and three songs, it works well as an indie folk album, if a fanciful concept one with jittery drum machine patterns".[2]
Reviewing the album for DIY, Neive McCarthy wrote that "immersed in the cinematic, the mythological and the art of experimenting, Tapir's debut an ode to the power music has to transport. Here they've created a captivating universe."[3] David Murphy of MusicOMH found the album to be "a collection of three EPs of bucolic, understated indie folk which tell a somewhat inscrutable epic story, and the first of these, Act 1 (The Pilgrim), sets the tone, but lowers the expectations", concluding that "people often say that the first episode of a sit-com is disappointing, and you should skip to the second, which is exactly the approach we propose for this album".[5]
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