Origami Angel: Feeling Not Found

This album makes me wonder what Ugly Kid Joe is up to these days. And, look, I’m not saying Origami Angel is the fake corporate grunge scourge of the world or anything, but there is something incredibly antiseptic and furiously antithetical to rock music about their tunage. It’s like incredibly generic pop music at times buried under layers of over-produced, post-hardcore and even indelibly weird alt-jazz rock at times. Like someone took a Cursive album, ran it through AI and told it “make this listenable.”

Because, don’t get me wrong, Feeling Not Found is nothing if not listenable. Almost addictively so. Despite its emo-metal chugging and early 2000s nasal vocal effects. Again, it feels weirdly like music created in a lab to cover all their bases, but sounds just a bit too artificial and clean around the edges. Probably how felt about Helmet’s Meantime when they burst onto the scene in 1992. There is just no dirt on anything. It’s this clean, amazing-sounding version of pop post-hardcore emo overindulgence that is both very cool but also a little too antiseptic for its own good. And at times so pop that one wonders what their intentions are. Subversion or true radio-play aspirations? If the radio was still a thing. Or maybe it’s just producer Will Yip’s approach to everything he touches. No warts. No squeals. Nothing off.

Which all leads me to the question: am I actually enjoying this? I certainly vibed with their last album, Gami Gang, as is obvious from my review of that record. I think their mash-up of styles was intriguing to me. And I hadn’t yet experienced the full panoply of the new post-hardcore rock bands like Turnstile and their ilk. So it was kind of unique and something different for my ears. But now that I’m immersed in their sound I’m starting to sense patterns and the slickness of their impressive instrumentation and ultra-clean production isn’t hitting my ears in the same way. Yes, it’s still listenable, but, again, is it enjoyable? And is that what we look for in our music? Sometimes, I guess. But other times you almost need imperfections — intentional or not — to remind you that you’re alive.