The law of averages strikes again as Gen Z pop-punk phenoms Origami Angel follow up their 20-track roller coaster of a second album with a tight, economical collection of eight simple, straightforward and effective bops.
That's not to suggest that 2021's GAMI GANG was needlessly bloated — it's actually remarkable how little of it felt extraneous — but the amount of joyful energy pumped into the quick 22 minutes of The Brightest Days makes listening to it a low-investment, high-reward proposal. The "mixtape," as they're calling it (even though the jumbled funhouse of GAMI GANG more closely matched that term than the thematic succinctness found here), gets in and out quickly, but it's bursting with so much of the band's infectious energy that it feels complete. It's like a dopamine injection that tricks your brain into thinking you just ran a marathon.
On their debut album Somewhere City, Origami Angel whisked you into a magical land of make-believe; similarly, but also conversely, The Brightest Days transports us to the sunny hell of an ugly, lonely, no-good summer on the real-world Atlantic coast. That ugliness presents itself lyrically, as singer/guitarist Ryland Heagy muses about the dystopian air of the COVID-19 pandemic, living in the political battleground of Washington, D.C. and feeling the general weight of complacency and self-doubt. Those darker, cynical themes are accompanied, though, by some of the most fun, upbeat music to be released this year — like basking in a big, bright ray of sunshine while the weather forecast insists that it's supposed to be cloudy.
An ongoing theme of Origami Angel's music is nostalgia for the joyful, innocent days of youth, and that continues here: "Where are you, my sunny feeling I knew as a kid? / Even on the brightest days, I can't see where you've been," Heagy sings merrily with a choir of other voices over the playful strums of a ukulele, opening the album like a children's TV show before the band blasts into a heavy-metal riff that sounds like a major-key version of Pantera. Again, even the cheery title of The Brightest Days, excerpted from that opening track, betrays the wistfulness that's at play throughout this recording. In what's probably the closest thing to a punk-ified Barenaked Ladies that isn't a blink-182 imitation, "Picture Frame" is full of bouncy riffs and flitting vocal melodies that nearly disguise the Groundhog Day-inspired scenario of its lyrics, as Heagy describes a daily ritual of simply trying to come up with a reason to go outside.
"Kobayashi Maru" moves between super-charged power-pop, a ska section and a hardcore beatdown so quickly that when Heagy sings, "I wonder what I'm going to fuck up this time," it doesn't feel like a hopeless lament but a celebration of self — warts and all. (It's a page right out of the PUP playbook.) Heagy also complains of being "jealous of an Energizer battery," despite the song buzzing along at approximately 10,000 bpm, a tempo that could only be feasibly maintained by hooking yourself up to a nuclear reactor. "Thank You, New Jersey" moves almost as quickly, and it's jammed full of math-rock shredding, blast beats, surf-rock riffing and a beachy, breezy bridge that actually sounds a fair bit like a recognizable Christmas classic.
Later, "My PG County Summer" employs chunky guitars, buzzy synths and rhythms that are bound to compel both pogoing and ass-shaking. It's a love letter to the band's home in D.C., even when an isolating, deadly pandemic and a cabal of right-wing insurgents threaten to de-romanticize their hometown: "For better or for worse that's where I'll be," Heagy concludes. "Few and Far Between" picks up where that song leaves off, as Heagy sings about the change in climate — both political and literal — and thinks about where he fits in the world; of all their songs, it's the most like their presumed mentors the Wonder Years in its climactic sound and lyrical scope. Like the opening track, the title of The Brightest Days again reveals its true meaning in the context of the finale: "The brightest days are few and far between."
As usual, there are metal riffs thrown in all over the place, but whenever those out-of-left-field elements pop up, they feel more tightly interwoven with the fabric of the song than ever. Meanwhile, Heagy continues to impress with his Twista-like ability to spit out mouthfuls of rapidfire rhymes, cramming a seemingly impossible number of syllables into consistently catchy hooks. At that, it's the meticulousness of the vocal arrangements more broadly that helps make the songs on The Brightest Days work so well; beyond Heagy's ear for melody, the band takes plenty of Beach Boys cues in their use of oohs and la-las, making their already irresistible singalongs even more likely to coax a smile out of even the most hardened cynics.
Despite becoming known for rapidfire pop-punk tunes that take rapid turns into classic emo riffs, metal shredding, hardcore breakdowns, bossa nova rhythms, trap beats and more, the band proves here that they still have enough tricks up their sleeves to surprise you with what's next. And with producer Drew Portalatin at the helm, The Brightest Days leaps out of the speakers with a loud, punchy sheen that the duo's previous home-studio recordings didn't have.
For the past few years, Origami Angel have been a blue-chip stock in the pop-punk scene whose devoted and fast-growing fandom made them look poised to become one of the biggest bands in the genre; their former tourmates the Wonder Years may be the most comparable growth model. The bigger production and extra-tight songwriting on The Brightest Days makes it feel like Origami Angel fandom is about to shift away from a secret club for Gen Z alt weirdos and reach the next level on their ascent to pop-punk supremacy.
(Counter Intuitive Records)That's not to suggest that 2021's GAMI GANG was needlessly bloated — it's actually remarkable how little of it felt extraneous — but the amount of joyful energy pumped into the quick 22 minutes of The Brightest Days makes listening to it a low-investment, high-reward proposal. The "mixtape," as they're calling it (even though the jumbled funhouse of GAMI GANG more closely matched that term than the thematic succinctness found here), gets in and out quickly, but it's bursting with so much of the band's infectious energy that it feels complete. It's like a dopamine injection that tricks your brain into thinking you just ran a marathon.
On their debut album Somewhere City, Origami Angel whisked you into a magical land of make-believe; similarly, but also conversely, The Brightest Days transports us to the sunny hell of an ugly, lonely, no-good summer on the real-world Atlantic coast. That ugliness presents itself lyrically, as singer/guitarist Ryland Heagy muses about the dystopian air of the COVID-19 pandemic, living in the political battleground of Washington, D.C. and feeling the general weight of complacency and self-doubt. Those darker, cynical themes are accompanied, though, by some of the most fun, upbeat music to be released this year — like basking in a big, bright ray of sunshine while the weather forecast insists that it's supposed to be cloudy.
An ongoing theme of Origami Angel's music is nostalgia for the joyful, innocent days of youth, and that continues here: "Where are you, my sunny feeling I knew as a kid? / Even on the brightest days, I can't see where you've been," Heagy sings merrily with a choir of other voices over the playful strums of a ukulele, opening the album like a children's TV show before the band blasts into a heavy-metal riff that sounds like a major-key version of Pantera. Again, even the cheery title of The Brightest Days, excerpted from that opening track, betrays the wistfulness that's at play throughout this recording. In what's probably the closest thing to a punk-ified Barenaked Ladies that isn't a blink-182 imitation, "Picture Frame" is full of bouncy riffs and flitting vocal melodies that nearly disguise the Groundhog Day-inspired scenario of its lyrics, as Heagy describes a daily ritual of simply trying to come up with a reason to go outside.
"Kobayashi Maru" moves between super-charged power-pop, a ska section and a hardcore beatdown so quickly that when Heagy sings, "I wonder what I'm going to fuck up this time," it doesn't feel like a hopeless lament but a celebration of self — warts and all. (It's a page right out of the PUP playbook.) Heagy also complains of being "jealous of an Energizer battery," despite the song buzzing along at approximately 10,000 bpm, a tempo that could only be feasibly maintained by hooking yourself up to a nuclear reactor. "Thank You, New Jersey" moves almost as quickly, and it's jammed full of math-rock shredding, blast beats, surf-rock riffing and a beachy, breezy bridge that actually sounds a fair bit like a recognizable Christmas classic.
Later, "My PG County Summer" employs chunky guitars, buzzy synths and rhythms that are bound to compel both pogoing and ass-shaking. It's a love letter to the band's home in D.C., even when an isolating, deadly pandemic and a cabal of right-wing insurgents threaten to de-romanticize their hometown: "For better or for worse that's where I'll be," Heagy concludes. "Few and Far Between" picks up where that song leaves off, as Heagy sings about the change in climate — both political and literal — and thinks about where he fits in the world; of all their songs, it's the most like their presumed mentors the Wonder Years in its climactic sound and lyrical scope. Like the opening track, the title of The Brightest Days again reveals its true meaning in the context of the finale: "The brightest days are few and far between."
As usual, there are metal riffs thrown in all over the place, but whenever those out-of-left-field elements pop up, they feel more tightly interwoven with the fabric of the song than ever. Meanwhile, Heagy continues to impress with his Twista-like ability to spit out mouthfuls of rapidfire rhymes, cramming a seemingly impossible number of syllables into consistently catchy hooks. At that, it's the meticulousness of the vocal arrangements more broadly that helps make the songs on The Brightest Days work so well; beyond Heagy's ear for melody, the band takes plenty of Beach Boys cues in their use of oohs and la-las, making their already irresistible singalongs even more likely to coax a smile out of even the most hardened cynics.
Despite becoming known for rapidfire pop-punk tunes that take rapid turns into classic emo riffs, metal shredding, hardcore breakdowns, bossa nova rhythms, trap beats and more, the band proves here that they still have enough tricks up their sleeves to surprise you with what's next. And with producer Drew Portalatin at the helm, The Brightest Days leaps out of the speakers with a loud, punchy sheen that the duo's previous home-studio recordings didn't have.
For the past few years, Origami Angel have been a blue-chip stock in the pop-punk scene whose devoted and fast-growing fandom made them look poised to become one of the biggest bands in the genre; their former tourmates the Wonder Years may be the most comparable growth model. The bigger production and extra-tight songwriting on The Brightest Days makes it feel like Origami Angel fandom is about to shift away from a secret club for Gen Z alt weirdos and reach the next level on their ascent to pop-punk supremacy.
