Music / Origami Angel

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Origami Angel is a American alternative rock / emo band from Washington DC. Starting in 2017, the duo consists of Ryland Heagy as the guitarist, bassist, and singer, and Pat Doherty as the drummer.

Despite the generally silly song titles (such as "Space Flex T-Skrrt" or "Tom Holland Oates"), Origami Angel's music hits on relatable topics such as childhood nostalgia, making the best out of a bad situation, and standing up for yourself. They have released two original albums and a mixtape.

Discography:

• Quiet Hours (2017 EP)
• Doing the Most (2018 EP)
• Holy Split (2019 collab EP)
• Gen 3 (2019 EP)
• Somewhere City (2019 album)
• Origami Angel Broke Minecraft (2020 remix album)
• GAMI GANG (2021 album)
• re: turn (2022 EP)
• DEPART (2022 EP)
• The Brightest Days (2023 mixtape)
• Feeling Not Found (2024 album)

Tropes:

• Album Intro Track: "Lost Signal", the first track on Feeling Not Found, is much slower and quieter than the rest of the album.
• Album Title Drop: The first and last tracks on The Brightest Days include the lines "even on the brightest days, I can't see where you've been!"
• all lowercase letters: The captions for Quiet Hours, Doing the Most, and Gen 3 are written in all lowercase and mostly without punctuation (barring some caps for emphasis). The track titles for re: turn use this as a theme.
• Anachronism Stew: Feeling Not Found is all about the corrupting emotional influence of social media judgement, being too online, and the impacts of the pandemic - all very 2020s topics, but the album art illustrates these themes in an intentionally nostalgic, retro style - one bandmember takes a recursive Polaroid photograph of himself, while the other views it on a late 90's iMac.
• Be Yourself: The message of "Feeling Not Found", where Ryland concludes he's ok with being who he is with all his flaws and issues, rather than giving into social media pressure to change into someone else.
• Boastful Rap: "XD Gale of Darkness" from Gen 3, notable for being the only Origami Angel song to be an outright rap.
  You already know I'm the top top of the top notch, never got got;
  Playin' with these kids like it's hop scotch
  Making everything around me so cold!
• Bookends: The same two lines begin and end The Brightest Days:
  Where are you, my sunny feeling I knew as a kid?
  Even on the brightest days, I can't see where you've been
• BSoD Song: The Album Closure track on The Brightest Days, "Few and Far Between", is about the singer's unsuccessful attempt to recapture the magic he found in summer when he was a kid. He realizes that the climate of the world has changed way too much for it to be feasible. Notably, while the album's Arc Words are said in a hopeful tone in the first song, by "Few and Far Between", it's much more defeated and sad.
• Call-Back: Merch released for Feeling Not Found features a computer rampaging through Somewhere City and tearing down the "Welcome to Somewhere City" sign from the first album cover, symbolizing how Online has destroyed the band's happy place and mental health.
• Celebrity is Overrated: A theme of Feeling Not Found, which is in part about the band dealing with their increased profile and success after GAMI GANG blew up. A number of songs deal with the stress of the constant judgement and need to look perfect created by fame and social media scrutiny. And as "Sixth Cents (Get it?)" points out, they don't even get much money from all of that.
• Concept Album: Very common.
  • See also Somewhere City.
  • The Brightest Days is "told through the lens of a shitty east coast summer." The mixtape is reflective on bad memories and the ways the world has changed.
  • Feeling Not Found explores the mental impact of social media fame and virality, with every song connecting to some aspect of the mind or soul being corrupted and overwhelmed by the internet. A number of songs explicitly mention computers in some fashion, in the title (e.g. "Viral", "Where the Blue Light Blooms", "Feeling not Found", "Lost Signal", "Dirty Mirror Selfie") or as a metaphor in the lyrics, and the album art is a retro version of the panopticon created by social media - Pat taking a polaroid photo of himself, which is viewed by Ryland on an iMac computer.
• Darker and Edgier:
  • The band's lyrical content has gotten gradually more negative over the course of their discography, with Somewhere City taking a generally positive outlook on life, to GAMI GANG having a mixture of positive songs with some railing against the haters, to the somewhat sad yet nostalgic outlook of The Brightest Days", to Feeling Not Found'', with lyrics dealing with a full blown mental health crisis and feeling like everyone is against you.
  • Feeling Not Found, while still full of peppy riffs and catchy choruses, is musically heavier than The Brightest Days, featuring more Harsh Vocals and heavy breakdowns (e.g. on "Dirty Mirror Selfie" or "Fruit Wine").
• Downer Ending: At the end of The Brightest Days, Ryland's attempts to have fun in summer have ended badly and make him realize there's very few things to actually look forward to with it.
• Easter Egg: The official lyrics for "w / u" on Bandcamp end with "uwu whats this", which isn't actually spoken in the song.
• A Glitch in the Matrix: Referenced and used metaphorically throughout "Dirty Mirror Selfie" to talk about losing your sense of self and your reality collapsing.
  I've been staring at the night sky waiting to find another glitch inside this matrix
  The amniotics that we all were made in, it's just the water we wade in
• Growing Up Sucks: The Brightest Days starts with the protagonist trying to find the magic in summer that he experienced as a kid. By the end of it, he's realized that Nothing Is the Same Anymore and is disillusioned by how much the world has changed for the worse since then.
• "I Am Becoming" Song: "Feeling Not Found", off the album by the same name, is about how the singer is getting better and becoming more comfortable with who he is, even though he hasn't figured it all out yet.
  I may not feel found, but I'm not as lost as I used to be
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The tracks on Gen 3 are named after the Pokemon games that make up that generation: "Ruby", "Sapphire", "Emerald", and "XD Gale of Darkness".
• Ironic Episode Title: "Thank You, New Jersey", which was made to communicate that Ryland doesn't actually like New Jersey at all.
• Joisey: "Thank You, New Jersey", a hate letter to the state, fulfills the "Armpit of America" stereotype, full of rude people and overcrowded and dirty beaches.
• Location Song: "Thank You, New Jersey" is dedicated to New Jersey. While the song can seem affectionate at first glance, it's actually dripping with sarcasm and applying California surf cliches to a place that has nothing to do with them.
• Longest Song Goes Last: "Few and Far Between" closes out The Brightest Days at a length of 4:22.
• Meaningful Echo: The Brightest Days opens with the line, "Where are you, my sunny feeling I knew as a kid? Even on the brightest days, I can't see where you've been!", and the rest of the Album Intro Track is about how he wants to prove that he really can make the summer meaningful and is determined to enjoy it just like he did back then. This line closes out the mixtape, but as a sad resignation of defeat, since his summer vacation ended up being terrible.
• Mind Virus: In "Viral" off of Feeling Not Found, anxiety and paranoia triggered by viral internet fame is portrayed as a a sort of Mind Virus that the singer struggles with.
  "Tell me I'll be safe from this virus in my mind"
• "The Music Industry Sucks" Song: Off of Feeling Not Found, "Sixth Cents (Get it?)" simultaneously decries the need to constantly market yourself and sell your soul as a band to make it and the pitifully little money bands receive from Spotify in the process.
• Production Foreshadowing: Origami Angel Broke Minecraft includes "Greenbelt Station" as its only track that isn't a remix. This song was later released (although slightly different) on GAMI GANG.
• Remix Album: Origami Angel Broke Minecraft includes calmer, slower remixes of previous songs, which then segue into something different: such as a chiptune track inspired by Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, or part of the Minecraft soundtrack.
  • "Witchu" is "w / u" from Doing the Most.
  • "Roo B" is "Ruby" from Gen 3.
  • "24 Hr Delivery" is "24-Hr Drive Thru" from Somewhere City.
  • "Rom Com Hacky Sack / Space Flex T-Skrrt" combines "ROM Hack" from Doing the Most and "SpaceX T-Shirt" from Quiet Hours.
  • "Greenbelt Station" is an original track. Interestingly, another version of this song was released on GAMI GANG, which came out a year later.
  • A standalone charity single, "Jazzy Whomst", is a calmer, instrumental version of "Doctor Whomst" from Somewhere City.
• Rock-Star Song: "HM 07 Waterfall" rails against the negative feedback and jealously the band started receiving after finding success, a theme that occurs throughout Feeling Not Found to some extent.
• Shout-Out: The cover art of Gen 3 is designed to resemble the Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire box art, with Origami Angel's logo in place of the box legendary.
• Social Media Is Bad: The Central Theme of Feeling Not Found, which is about the feelings of anxiety, hyper scrutiny, and artificiality created by social media fame. In the music video for "Wretched Trajectory", the band struggles with online trolls while simultaneously gaining accolades for a video of the singer's dog that goes viral, to the point that audiences at the band's show ignore the band while fawning over the dog.
• That One Summer: The Central Theme of The Brightest Days is the singer reminiscing on the amazing summers he had as a kid and trying to relive the feeling by going on a road trip. However, by the end, he realizes that Nothing Is the Same Anymore and the world has changed too much since then.
• Title Drop: Two in "Few and Far Between", the last track of The Brightest Days:
  'Cause it's been raining the whole summer
  The brightest days are few and far between