Feeling Not Found, the third full-length record from Washington, D.C. duo Origami Angel, is the
one—the rare, undeniable piece of work that defines a sound, a moment, a subculture, a band’s
position in the continuum of music. Vocalist/guitarist Ryland Heagy and drummer Pat Doherty
have been building to this record since they started the band in 2016, growing it quickly into one
of the most exciting and volcanic bands in the American punk and emo communities. A 14-track
epic recorded with producer Will Yip at his Studio 4 Recording, Feeling Not Found revolves
around the deeply modern experience teased in the title: an emotional and spiritual 404 error, a
sensation of cellular-level malfunction and data corruption, of being lost in an oblivion of digital
information, and the desperate struggle to reconnect to how it feels to be human and whole.
“I was looking at America as this digital silicon hellscape,” says Heagy. “What came to me was,
in this amalgamation, this sea of randomness, I felt not found, you know? It speaks to where we
were as a band, and where I was as a person. For about three years until we finished this
album, I was in a very, very lost place in my life, and everything felt very random and unstable.”
Heagy and Doherty explore and explode that limbo on a record that demonstrates Origami
Angel at the top of their class, cementing their status as a boundary-pushing, breakneck,
cross-culture and cross-genre phenomenon. The record is choreographed like a roller coaster,
driving seamlessly between sunny easycore jams, crushing metalcore riffing, jazzy indie rock,
misty emo, electronic, and so much more. It sounds like precisely what it is, the thing that makes
Origami Angel so special: Heagy and Doherty’s twin brains poured out into an audio file, refined
but unrestrained, unhinged and profound and in dogged pursuit of a creative expression of their
lived experiences.
Heagy and Doherty have been working on the material that comprises Feeling Not Found for
years, through the time periods of both their previous LPs, 2019’s Somewhere City and 2021’s
breakout smash Gami Gang. Those releases (and the intense, infamous live shows that
supported them) established Origami Angel as a unique force that interspersed elements of ’90s
math and emo with early 2000s pop-punk and easycore to grow something new and
contemporary, something that felt as breakneck and relentless and teetering-on-the-edge as this
era of human history.
But the juxtaposition of the band’s rise in notoriety with the pandemic’s sudden requirement of
online-only existence for musical performers fucked with Heagy’s head—a duality that runs
through the new LP. “Growing up a DIY kid, a punk kid, it was all about the community, and
that’s something that I strived to find,” he says. “Then it was like overnight, we had it, then we
didn’t, but it’s growing into this thing that I can’t physically interact with. I just triggered my own
personal anxieties and my own mental health was really fucked up by that. I was so puzzled by
the way that my brain reacted to it.”
When it came time to execute this new chapter, they linked up with Will Yip to bring the record to
life at his Conshocken studio. The collaboration had deep emotional roots for Heagy: His
cousin, who had tracked with Yip at Studio 4 in 2010, passed away in January 2023. Yip was
one of the first people to reach out to Heagy when he heard the news. Heagy shut off—he didn’t
want to do anything. But Yip’s compassion urged him onward. “The understanding that we had
about that part of what was going on in my life was really, really important,” says Heagy.
Opening track “Lost Signal” is about the loss, and the life-altering affirmation Heagy found in a
moment of static noise at his cousin’s funeral.
Lead single “Dirty Mirror Selfie” follows, a furious pogo-ready riff that plunges on into a
power-pop-punk declaration of intent: “All this time I wasted struggling fighting for things that I
thought that I lacked/Now I’m taking that back!” Heagy sings. “Where Blue Light Blooms,” the
stunning, operatic second lead single, finds Heagy and Doherty giving a workshop in
outside-the-box songwriting and gorgeous chord voicings, including one of the most thrilling
bridges you’ll hear on a rock song this year.
Follow-up single “Wretched Trajectory” is an ecstatic, major-key easycore romp through
alienation and discomfort, while “Sixth Cents (Get It?)” jacks things up with a classic hardcore
intro before shifting gears at a dizzying pace between moods and rhythms. Likewise, twin single
release “Secondgradefoofight” starts in at an angelic tone before speeding off to a brain-splitting
climax. (Yes, that’s how it’s spelled. As serious as they are about their craft, Heagy and Doherty
are still unrepentant goofballs and double-entendre-lovers.)
Heagy and Doherty bring it all to a close on the title track “Feeling Not Found”—Heagy’s frantic
riffing and calm, confident vocal cuts in like sun slashing through dusty blinds, before Doherty’s
drums blow the blinds right off. All the difficult shit that Origami Angel have tried to work through
on Feeling Not Found might not be solved or fixed forever, but there’s a mutual understanding
that’s been established along the way, one that provides enough of a reason to keep trying.
Heagy’s resolve is clear and powerful: “And I may not feel found, but I’m not as lost as I used to
be/And it may not be right, but it’s not as wrong as it usually seems/I can be as here and as real
as I want if I want and you’ll never take that away/This out of date software’s here to stay.”
Feeling Not Found is out September 27 on Counter Intuitive Records.