Origami Angel – The Brightest Days | Mixtape Review
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Counter Intuitive Records
There is something borderline poetic about listening to “The Brightest Days,” the title track of Origami Angel’s new mixtape, while you’re looking at a sky full of haze due to sweeping wildfires and simultaneously doom scrolling on the hellscape that is Twitter dot com. I, too, am asking where my sunny feeling is now that the sense of the world ending is so strong that it feels like I’m wearing concrete shoes and was just thrown into the bay. The soft ukulele and group vocals singing this lovely little melody quickly turn into a rug pulled out from beneath your feet as Pat Doherty’s drums come in like a punch to the face and the crunchy guitars take the forefront of the song. The backing vocals throughout this entire mixtape, especially this first song, are reminiscent of The Beach Boys. These swooning, summery vocals paired with the gritty guitar, the halftime breakdown at the end of this 2:27 track (a perfect amount of time, I am always saying that songs should be 30 seconds shorter), and the melodic guitar riff make for an absolute banger introduction to this mixtape that’s full of twists and turns. Throughout this release, you never know what you’ll get with the next track, and I think that was exactly what Origami Angel were betting on. The outro slips into the familiar ukulele, and the ghost of the guitar feedback leads you into the next song, creating a wonderful little bookend of sound that leaves the listener still reeling just a bit and excited to figure out what’s coming next.
Did I mention Beach Boys backing vocals? Yeah, welcome to “Thank You, New Jersey,” the first single from The Brightest Days and a song I take very personally as a New Jersey native. I’ll take a note from the Immortal Bard and say that brevity is the soul of wit, considering most of the community has already listened. It's here where the band really establishes the theme of surfy vocals, this time paired with crunchy, layered guitars... and that little waltzy bridge doesn’t hurt either. As a lead single, this was a fun and clever introduction to this mixtape that had me stoked to see what was coming next – Pat Doherty absolutely crushing the first 45 seconds of this song was truly what sucked me in here, not that the lyrical content wasn’t just absolutely up my alley. If there’s one thing New Jerseyans love more than people leaving them the hell alone, it’s also being at the center of attention. We are truly an onion of a people: full of layers. These D.C. natives genuinely seem to understand us. Another track clocking in under 2:40, Origami Angel is receiving a large ‘Your welcome’ from me on behalf of the Garden State.
Do I imagine “Picture Frame” as a song playing during the opening scene of some coming-of-age movie or TV show? Yeah, and I promise that’s a compliment. That guitar riff that starts off the song is head-bobbing, catchy, and a LITTLE Blink-182 if you squint. It leads directly into a high-energy chorus that I know will have people moving and grooving at the next Gami show, hopefully becoming a new staple of their setlist. The quick vocal lines in the next verse are a great addition to the song as the band continues to switch things up, never letting a moment go stale. Not only do no two songs sound the same, no two parts of a song sound too similar. The band never uses one idea enough times for it to get monotonous or boring. Once they have your attention, they don’t let it go.
As a Trekkie, “Kobayashi Maru (My Very Own)” was on my radar the moment I read the title. To give some context for those unaware, the Kobayashi Maru is a training exercise in the Starfleet Academy – a test to show recruits and trainees that sometimes you simply cannot win despite your best efforts, greatest strengths, and high intellects. I love the symbolism used here, not just on a nerd level, but it is an excellent metaphor for that consistent feeling of failure and the resignation that sometimes you just won’t be able to win. I’m absolutely digging the ska-adjacent guitar strokes in the second verse; this song is probably giving the most Motion City Soundtrack energy out of all of them for me. The instrumental chunk that takes up the last 40 seconds of the song is stank-face-worthy (affectionate) and has the song ending with more energy than it even began with, which makes it a perfect transition into the next track.
“Second Best Friend” is the second-longest song on the mixtape, but it sure doesn’t feel that way. Origami Angel has a way of bringing out some of the most ear-pleasing guitar riffs right at the start of a song and still managing to build and grow throughout. The hard-hitting drums and guitar lick quickly give way to dreamy vocals, soft, reverberating backup vocals, and acoustic guitars for just a moment–long enough that when the drums come back, it almost takes you off guard. They’re doing a great job at switching up dynamics all throughout this mixtape while still sounding definitively Origami Angel. I adore the synth in this song and how Ryland managed to create a great balance between guitar riffs and keys here, giving both the chance to round out the track without being overwhelming. This might be my favorite song of the mixtape given the dynamics – the lyrics, the stops and starts, and the varying instruments being brought to the forefront throughout the song. It sounds like Drew Portalatin really spread his engineering and production wings on this one, and it paid off. The entire mixtape is excellently produced, but this song in particular solidified that it was something special for me.
I love a transitional song, precisely what the less than a minute-and-a-half, ukulele-driven “Looking Out” provides. It allows the audience to catch their breath after listening to five high-energy back-to-back bangers before moving along. It’s a sweet little song too, with kind lyrics and ocean waves in the background. It throws you a little off your guard so that when the guitar feedback starts in the next song and that drum-heavy, gritty guitar intro to “My PG County Summer” comes in, you are wide awake, alert, and ready.
The second single, “My PG County Summer,” has received its love and praise from the public already, but I would be remiss not to mention it here given its relevance and the fact that it’s. The synth in this song, combined with the backing vocals that hit at that 1:43 mark, is what really drives it, in my opinion. I’ve been singing the praises of the backing vocals, and I shall sing them louder now. Origami Angel knows how to build a song, bring it to its height, and end it so that no drop of energy is wasted.
This all ends with the 4:22 “Few and Far Between,” which ties right back into the title track, giving the mixtape a rounded, cyclical feeling so that you barely know where it all ends and where it begins. Every downstroke of the guitar is purposeful, and the lyrics get brought to the forefront of this one which is perfect given this outro essentially sums up the mixtape as a whole.
And I still say that I love it here, behind clenched teeth and constant fear
Cause one day it will all disappear
This lyric struck me as something so true and universal – I feel it every single day, as I’m sure most, if not everyone, also feels. It’s an absolute shame to live in a world that is so imperfect and also so temporary. You want to stop and appreciate and love, and sometimes it is SO easy to do. Other days, it feels near impossible, but you make yourself love it anyway because, let’s be real, who would truly be surprised if tomorrow we found out it was going to be the last day we all had here? Not me, that’s for sure.
Origami Angel is calling The Brightest Days a mixtape rather than an EP or an album. There’s an incredibly neat balance between experimental and familiar, which is all wrapped up with a high energy, banging-guitar-riffing, climate crisis, and anxiety-having bow. Every song is different; I love the varied guitar tones and how quickly they switch from gritty and crunchy to bright and round. Even more impressively, Origami Angel have managed to create eight stellar songs that feel as though there’s no emptiness, no SPACE where attention or momentum could be lost. The soft parts of the songs have no weakness; the large walls of sound don’t seem overwhelming, but full and warm. It feels like everything is very purposely placed, nothing haphazard or rushed. And as the mixtape fades out with that same ukulele, the same lyrics, and that comforting sound of ocean waves – It just feels natural to let the whole thing repeat
August Greenberg (they/them) is a music lover from Philadelphia, PA, who has written for Spinning Thoughts and had a journey within the music scene by fronting the indie band Riverby. They love good music and never wanna shut up about it.
