Jape ends his hiatus as threads come together
E‘Covid made me question the value of creativity in some ways’
ndless Thread is the new album by Jape or if you prefer ‘Endless Thread är det nya albumet av Jape’ as they say in Sweden. Jape – aka Ritchie Egan – made his home in the Scandinavian country 11 years ago.
‘I’ve got day-to-day Swedish but I wouldn’t be able to have philosophical conversations. I can read Swedish if I can take my time over it,’ the 47-year-old tells me over Zoom from his Malmo home.
The two-time Choice Music Prize winner has also taken his time following up on 2019’s Sentinel with Endless Thread, his seventh album.
‘I felt I needed to get myself together on a level away from music and be a family person,’ he says. He and his Swedish wife Noomi have three children Anja, Richie Jr and Noah.
‘When you have kids, the gaps end up being just a bit longer. In between albums for me it’s always been about learning something new about being alive and trying to put that back into the next record,’ he says.
The record’s artwork, designed by M&E Sweden, is a bust of Richie’s head created by a 3D printer. His facial expression a mix of surprise and bemusement. The onset of the Covid pandemic made him, like many people, pose existential questions on an unprecedented scale and also prompted the title of the album.
‘Covid, of course changed everything psychically for people. It made me question the value of creativity in some ways,’ he concedes.
‘There is important s*** going on that is a matter of life and death and where does art fit in?
‘For me in my little world it is the endless thread of creativity that just goes through everything and also the endless thread of scrolling through the internet. During Covid, minds became very stimulated; everybody was on the internet all the time because there was nothing else to do. Now you see that some people are angry about so many things and looking for someone to blame.’
Tracks such as Heal These Wounds,
‘I object to someone on a gold chair in the Vatican dictating what’s right or wrong’
The Hilbert Hotel and Our Home are by turns wry and thought-provoking. Endless Thread stands with the best work of an artist who uniquely has won two Choice Music Prizes. The title of the closing track alone attracts the eye. F*** The Church reflects Richie’s view that the Catholic Church has been a negative force and presence and whose influence in Ireland is finally journeying to irrelevance.
‘I read that Fintan O’Toole book We Don’t Know Ourselves and it reminded me of the hold that the Church had over public consciousness in Ireland for so many years,’ he says. ‘I object very strongly to someone on a gold chair in the Vatican dictating what’s right or wrong to the poor of Ireland or anywhere else. Then there are the Magdalene Laundry women whose lives were completely ruined by this morality police. They had some cheek given what we know now.’
F*** The Church is written, he says, as much out of grief for those who have been victims in various different ways of the power of the Church contending that ‘if there is a god, a compassionate god, he wouldn’t do that to anyone’.
As our chat closes, he says that spiritualism is a part of his life and that other factors have contributed to his sense of well-being.
‘Spirituality is such a beautiful thing to investigate yourself,’ he says.
‘I got heavily into Buddhism in the last few years. I try to maintain a life in keeping with that. I stopped drinking and began meditating and practising yoga and I run. I try to get my dopamine from healthier places than I used to in the past.’
n Endless Thread is out now and Jape plays the Button Factory, Dublin, on Friday and Whelan’s, Dublin, on Saturday