Origami Angel : Feeling Not Found
It probably won’t come as a surprise that some of the material on the third full-length from Washington, D.C.’s Ryland Heagy and Pat Doherty—the guitarist and drummer duo known as Origami Angel—has been gestating since even before the late 2019 release of their debut album, Somewhere City. If they’re known for one thing above all else, it’s their prolific streak. Sure, circumstances dictated they couldn’t make the most of 2020, what should have been their breakout year, but it just meant they went back to the lab; repeatedly, in a fashion that makes us wonder what else they’ve mapped out even now.
A sprawling sophomore record (2021’s justifiably all-caps GAMI GANG); two interconnected EPs in re: turn and Depart; last year’s short and sweet mixtape The Brightest Days, all within three years of each other. So when they returned this year with “Fruit Wine” (sample lyric: “Alter your state of mind / To adapt to the fact that you’ll never have happiness in any capacity,” going straight for the jugular after not even a year away), it seemed something was up—and that something is Feeling Not Found, unquestionably their best record yet. Somewhat unfairly pigeonholed as a caffeinated pop-punk band, their willingness to experiment has helped them push their sound forward, throwing genre experiments like bossa nova, jazz and neck-snapping hardcore in a blender just because they can.
The intensity and dramatics of the current wave of emo, of which they’ve found themselves at the forefront—note the album title’s dual meaning—are present and correct, but the first thing we hear on the record is “Lost Signal,” a brief snapshot of intense grief that feeds into the prevailing narrative of digital disconnect and living in a constant state of being overwhelmed. As well as being the most restrained song on the record by a country mile, it’s also the introduction to a lyric sheet that hits like a truck; “Viral” is a moving portrait of mental turmoil from a pair whose discography is littered with pun-based track titles and a general lightness of touch when it comes to genre and composition that’s mostly reflected in their lyrics. It’s why they can get away with calling an appropriately anxious ode to burning bridges and going entirely off the grid to start over something like “secondgradefoofight,” with tongues so firmly in cheeks that they may need surgery.
Elsewhere, the back-breaking toil of music creation in thrall to streaming algorithms is taken to task on “Sixth Cents (Get It?)”, with the notion of ‘turning blood, sweat and tears into dollar signs’ mocked with the kind of knowing resignation that comes with being an artist in 2024. It’s a game you have to play in order to get by, so Heagy and Doherty may as well have fun with it—and have fun they do, whether it’s exploring awkward social interactions on “Wretched Trajectory” or screwing around with song structures on “Where Blue Light Blooms.” Throughout the album, things rarely end up in the same place they began, with the 40-minute record keeping the listener on their toes throughout.
For all of the emotional depths it plumbs, the album ensures there’s light at the end of the tunnel, with “HM07 Waterfall” (because it wouldn’t be a Gami record without at least one Pokémon reference, and appropriately it’s a song on which the album scales new heights), “Higher Road” and the cathartic rush of its closer and title track coming together to finish things off on a high. The latter’s in contention for one of the year’s best closers and is a demonstration of Origami Angel at the peak of their powers. It’s got the hooks and heart of their best stuff, and it’s even got a guitar solo—fairly unfashionable these days, toeing the line between ridiculous and brilliant; but then again, that’s this band in microcosm. They’ve never been ones to take themselves too seriously; whether it’s critiquing the inner workings of the music industry or exploring the inner workings of faulty mental circuitry, there’s an earnestness to Feeling Not Found that these two have had on lock since they started making music together. “This fucking suffering only amounts to stupid little songs,” Heagy laments on “Dirty Mirror Selfie”; well, those songs have brought him and his bandmate pretty damn far in six years. Who knows what routes they’re headed down next? Okay, they probably do—after all, their super effective latest offering shows that they’re still several steps ahead.
Label: Counter Intuitive
Year: 2024
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Origami Angel : Feeling Not Found
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