Album Of The Week: Origami Angel Feeling Not Found

It feels like treading water. Like you’re at the starting line of a marathon, already out of breath. Like spiraling, but you can’t tell if you’re headed up or down. Like all your stupid little songs are all starting to sound the same.

This is what it feels like to be lost according to Origami Angel, the DC rock duo whose discography over the past eight years has largely focused on what brings folks together. “I’m too scared to be alone,” guitarist/vocalist Ryland Heagy proclaimed on their 2018 EP Doing The Most; since then, he and bandmate Pat Doherty have written sincere skate-punk anthems about watching cartoons and eating fast food next to friends and crushes, with healthy doses of gang vocals at nearly every turn to reflect a world that feels anything but lonely.

More Modern Baseball than American Football, Origami Angel were never all that bummed about the summer ending, so to speak – they were too busy trying to find a way to make the good times last forever. But your head can only stay in the clouds for so long before the altitude gets to you.

And so we arrive at Origami Angel’s third full-length album Feeling Not Found, out this Friday. It’s the band’s most biting and demanding record to date, using their cathartic brand of maximalist, emo-inflicted pop-punk to convey their woes about being cogs in the digital machine. They recorded the album with alt rock-inclined studio vet Will Yip, and along with bands like fellow Yip acolytes glass beach, Origami Angel are among a small, recent crop of bands who nod to 2000s metalcore without watering down their unadulterated DIY roots. Brash, sharp, and innovative, Feeling Not Found is an exemplary portrait of the state of pop-punk in 2024.

Heagy and Doherty began working on the material that would eventually comprise the record at least five years ago, and its result feels both liberated and deeply conisdered; its narrators have seen the explosion of TikTok, the rise and fall of Instagram, the hellscape of Twitter/X through multiple election cycles. Ever the fans of wordplay, even the title Origami Angel chose for the album almost acts as a double entendre; not only evoking a blasé attitude towards an unknown world, but the cold sensation of being unknowable.

In the three years since their last proper full-length, their inside-joke-riddled double-album GAMI GANG, Heagy began to feel lost: “Everything [in my life] felt very random and unstable,” he’s said. With that in mind, Feeling Not Found seems to ask: Is anything in our everyday lives more random or unstable than modern technology? The album underscores the effects of a life spent online, where validation more often than not comes through a screen, physical media feels nearly obsolete, and Find My Friends becomes one of the most earnest form of human connection.

Heagy questions the true value of parasocial relationships and follower count on the dizzying “Underneath My Skin”: “It’s meaningless to think that you know someone, you really don’t/ Just ‘cause you’ve got mutual friends/ Opinions and pictures of them.” But he’s played the game, too, and knows that aspiring to “blowing up” isn’t so illogical when it means raking in six figures instead of pennies. On “Sixth Cents (Get It?),” Heagy analyzes the modern-day music biz, where the responsibility of marketing becomes a full additional hustle: “You’re gonna have to turn blood, sweat, and tears into dollar signs,” he argues with a snarl over breakneck drums and piercing riffs. Meanwhile, atop the hefty guitars of “Viral,” Heagy begs: “Tell me something good, I wanna smile one more time/ Tell me I’ll be safe from the virus in my mind.” You get the sense that he isn’t pleading to another person, but to social media itself to absolve the worries those platforms catalyzed.

But what keeps Feeling Not Found from slipping into overt self-pity is Origami Angel’s ability to reflect on themselves. In January 2023, Heagy’s cousin – another musician who, incidentally, had previously worked with Yip – passed away. The somber, drumless album opener “Lost Signal” is a snapshot of grief, as Heagy lets the YouTube autoplay queue fill in the newly-emptied space. It’s not the type of song you’d expect from an Origami Angel album, much less the first song. But it imbues Feeling Not Found with a much-needed sense of humanness amid the glitched-up matrix of its existential dread. The internet has a way of convincing us we’re at a deficit in every aspect of life – relationships, money, the things we wear and do. It might be inescapable at this point, but Feeling Not Found is a lesson in seeking true fulfillment regardless. “All this time I wasted struggling fighting for things that I thought that I lacked/ Now I’m taking that back!” Heagy proclaims on “Dirty Mirror Selfie.” It sounds like he’s well on his way already.

Feeling Not Found is out 9/27 via Counter Intuitive.

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Other albums of note out this week:
• Alan Sparhawk’s White Roses, My God
• Billy Strings’ Highway Prayers
• Xiu Xiu’s 13″ Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto With Bison Horn Grips
• Merce Lemon’s Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild
• Fantasy Of A Broken Heart’s Feats Of Engineering
• SOPHIE’s SOPHIE
• Lady Gaga’s Harlequin
• Tommy Richman’s COYOTE
• Trace Mountains’ Into The Burning Blue
• Kate Bollinger’s Songs From A Thousand Frames Of Mind
• Being Dead’s EELS
• MICHELLE’s Songs About You Specifically
• Tuelo’s Regarding My Heart
• Eli & Fur’s Dreamscapes
• Chain Cult’s Harm Reduction
• Naima Bock’s Below A Massive Dark Land
• Nina Nesbitt’s Mountain Music
• Efterklang’s Things We Have In Common
• Liam Benzvi’s …And His Splash Band
• Blitz Vega’s Northern Gentleman
• Maxïmo Park’s Stream Of Life
• Leif Vollebekk’s Revelation
• Hayden Thorpe’s Ness
• Sløtface’s Film Buff
• The Black Dahlia Murder’s Servitude
• Creed Bratton’s Tao Pop
• TSHA’s Sad Girl
• Ezra Collective’s Dance, No One’s Watching
• Crows’ Reason Enough
• Mr. Gnome’s A Sliver Of Space
• Kimbra’s Idols & Vices, Vol. 1
• JD McPherson’s Nite Owls
• Gavin DeGraw’s Chariot
• Van Morrison’s New Arrangements And Duets
• The Strike’s Until The Lights Go Out
• The Wolfgang Press’ A 2nd Shape
• Christian Lee Hutson’s Paradise Pop. 10
• Dar Disku’s Dar Disku
• Jerry Paper’s INBETWEEZER
• Mustafa’s Dunya
• Chris Maxwell’s Nothingland
• Tropical Fuck Storm’s live album Tropical Fuck Storm’s Inflatable Graveyard
• Richie Kotzen’s NOMAD
• Gallant’s Zinc
• BAYNK’s SENESCENCE
• John Davis’ Jinx
• The Courettes’ The Soul Of… The Fabulous Courettes
• Michaela Jaé’s 33
• Jake Blount & Mali Obomsawin’s symbiont
• His Name Is Alive’s How Ghosts Affect Relationships: 1990-1993 Box Set
• Whitney Johnson/Matchess’ Hav & Stena
• Nathan Jacques’ Dark Wanderer And The Bounty Heart
• Holly Macve’s Wonderland
• Glasser’s crux deluxe
• Neva Dinova’s Canary
• Dean Spunt’s Basic Editions
• Brackish’s Rear View
• Ripped To Shreds’ Sanshi
• Ingebrigt Håker Flaten (Exit) Knarr’s Breezy
• Mediocre’s Growth Eater
• Jill Fraser’s Earthly Pleasures
• Sharada Shashidhar’s Soft Echoes
• The Asteroid No.4’s Several Shapes Of Solar Flares
• Six Organs Of Admittance’s Companion Rises (Twig Harper Remix)
• Sad Night Dynamite’s Welcome The Night
• Katya Yonder’s Cure
• Various Artists’ The Wild Robot Soundtrack
• Luke Bryan’s Mind Of A Country Boy
• Best Bets’ The Hollow Husk Of Feeling
• Lou Reed’s Why Don’t You Smile Now: Lou Reed At Pickwick Records 1964-65
• Quadry’s Ask A Magnolia
• Dylan Sinclair’s FOR THE BOY IN ME
• Bilal’s Adjust Brightness
• JOBA’s Russell Boring
• Number_i’s No.I
• Kolumbo’s Sandy Legs
• Montell Fish’s Charlotte
• PSYCHLONA’s Warped Vision
• CS + KREME’s The Butterfly Drinks The Tears Of The Tortoise
• Broadcast’s Distant Call – Collected Demos 2000 – 2006
• Horace Andy & Jah Wobble’s “Timeless Roots”
• Mickey Guyon’s House On Fire
• William Basinski’s September 23rd
• Awake The Dreamer’s Holocene
• Kit Sebastian’s New Internationale
• Fur Trader’s Whose Dream Is This
• Dream Theater’s Dream Theater Vol. 1 Box Set
• The Irrepressibles’ Yo Homo!
• Smoking Popes’ Born To Quit (Live Session)
• Kill Lincoln’s No Normal
• Leon Thomas’ MUTT
• Joe Samba’s Lifeline
• Rob Mazurek & Exploding Star Orchestra’s Live At The Adler Planetarium
• Matt Maeson’s That’s My Cue: A Solo Experience
• The Lumineers’ LIVE FROM WRIGLEY FIELD
• Clem Snide’s Oh Smokey
• Ian Gothe & Fernando Perdomo’s NEVER LET GO — A Tribute to Camel
• October Drift’s Blame The Young
• Lane 8’s Childish
• Brett Eldredge’s Merry Christmas (Welcome To The Family)
• Christina Aguielra’s Spotify Anniversaries Live Album
• Rahim Redcar’s Hopecore
• London Grammar’s The Greatest Love (Deluxe)
• DaBaby’s HOW TF IS THIS A MIXTAPE?
• Modern Baseball’s You’re Gonna Miss It All (Deluxe Anniversary Edition)
• Moneybagg Yo’s SPEAK NOW OR… (Deluxe)
• Walter Smith III’s three of us are from Houston and Reuben is not
• Chicago’s Chicago At The John. F. Kennedy Center For The Performing Arts, Washington D.C. (9/16/1971) Live Album
• allie’s Every Dog
• Schande’s Once Around
• Daisy The Great’s Spectacle: Daisy The Great Vs. Tony Visconti EP
• Sunflower Bean’s Shake EP
• The Fray’s The Fray Is Back EP
• RiTchie & FearDorian’s Quiet Warp Xpress EP
• duendita’s the mind is a miracle EP
• Monaleo’s Throwing Bows EP
• Serj Tankian’s Foundations EP
• Show Me The Body’s Corpus II EP II EP
• Ed Sheeran’s +-=÷× (TOUR COLLECTION)