2021

2021 was supposed to usher in “The Great Reset.” After the upheaval of 2020, the equivalent of unplugging and re-plugging in the world was viewed as necessary so that we could move forward and get back on track. This was the moment where everything would snap back into place, where we could restore what we had lost through the discipline of spirit and the innovation of science. There were all these indicators that we were getting past it too: Sports came back. Some of us were returning to the office and seeing people in public spaces. The Beatles and The Matrix were cool again (depending on the part of the Internet you visit). We were thriving because the signifiers of the life we had before the pandemic were beginning to reappear. The thrill of that reboot felt like the nightmare was finally over.

Twelve months later, the naivety of that sentiment scans as quaint (“lol. lmao.” To use the parlance of our times.). 2021 was a year of two steps forward and falling backwards down the stairs. The gum and shoestring patchwork of masks and vaccines may have gotten people out of their homes but didn’t seemed to heal the collective grief we felt from what we lost. The abnormality of now, and the pandemic’s resilience, continue undermine the symbols of an “ordinary” life. Athletes risk COVID-19 every time they step onto the field. The protocols to return to public life are precarious and mercurial. The Beatles, Keanu Reeves, and Carrie-Anne Moss embody the collective “big mood,” which is tired as all hell.

The legacy signifiers of a thriving world seem to be failing us, or worse, they are emptier than we thought. The naked truth is that the *things* we were looking forward to weren’t ever going to sustain us. The material world always has, and always will be, meaningless without the ones we love — full of signposts on a journey and not the destination.

Gami Gang, the sophomore album from Washington D.C.’s Origami Angel, opens with a cranked-to-11 salvo of undulating trap, jagged riffs, pummeling blast beats from Pat Doherty, and the uncompromising sincerity of guitarist Ryland Heagy, singing: “Promise me / Nothing that you said was hyperbole / All the shit you said about loving me / Every day for eighteen months / Just say it’s true…” The transition from “#GAMIGANG” to “Self-Destruct” is decidedly “a lot” but it’s also a direct plea for authentic connection. It’s the request for a lifeline. Heagy is searching for truth, for meaning, for anything in a world where being extremely online and being IRL are harder to separate these days. It’s difficult to know if they arrive at an answer but over the course of a 50 minute double album Heagy and Doherty explore how we can try to capture those connections with each other, while wrestling with the narrative structures and pitfalls of the material world. The result is a collection of songs that balances the truth and joy about moving through the trauma and anxiousness of the current moment — the kind of album you wish you could give your younger self in a time of crisis.

Of course, it helps that Gami Gang is assembled with the same love and attention to electrifying detail that Origami Angel have built their reputation on. Where the group’s debut, Somewhere City, constructed a memory palace of self-empowerment and propulsive power-pop, Gami Gang plays more like a collection of neurotic and earnest vignettes that blast by at warp speed. Make no mistake, this album is a guitar lover’s dream. Pit rippers like “Mobious Chicken Strip” and “Mach Bike” feature twisting melodies and a workman-like pop-punk bounce, demonstrating why Origami Angel are the current vanguards for this brand of hyper-caffeinated 5th wave emo. And they don’t stop there. “[spoons rattling]” and “Tom Holland Oates” incorporate some caveman-style sasscore into the group’s loud-to-quiet dynamics, which feels very of the moment and adds some emotional heft to mirror the feelings of overwhelm the group is working through. Elsewhere, the album’s unimpeachable standout, “Noah Fence,” is a blistering call and response of string-tapping wizardry, complete with an exceptional Malcolm in the Middle reference and an atomic bomb of a chorus: “They keep telling me ‘bout Heavеn / It sounds a lot like when I’m with you / And if I could write a book about you / Maybе they would see / Exactly why you mean the world to me…” This is all to say — Origami Angel have worked hard to raise the bar and they’ve taken their sound into a bigger and bolder place their second time around.

While 50 minutes might seem brief for a double album, Origami Angel take listeners on plenty of detours across Gami Gang’s run time. On an album that’s essentially about taking everything in all at once, all the time, Gami Gang includes sonic flourishes that broaden the group’s palette and doubles down on their effervescent earnestness. It’s hard not to smile at the bubbling Brazilian bends of “Bossa Nova Corps” as they give way to thick power chord crunch. The group dares you not to headbang to the medieval ramp up of “Isopropyl Alchemy,” which takes listeners though a dungeon and into the bright lights of 924 Gilman Street. Late album highlight “Dr. Fondoom” features shambling speed-folk buoyed by massive gang vocals (“I can’t stop smiling / That’s so unlike me / It makes me happy / When I see you…”). The overall mood on Gami Gang seems to be “LFG,” at all times, possibly the result of writing and recording this album in isolation — at a time where the duo probably needed to remind themselves about what gets them excited in the first place. Listeners are the lucky beneficiaries, and in hindsight, it was brilliant for Heagy and Doherty to release a double lead single that included “Neutrogena Spektor’s” metallic chug and “Greenbelt Station’s” lilting acoustic oasis. Both songs serve as the sonic tentpoles of Gami Gang and everything else in the middle was always going to be a portmanteau of the things Heagy and Doherty geek-out over.

Musical fluidity aside, an album this omnivorous can’t succeed without an emotional center. At its core, Gami Gang is a record that explores the many facets of modern love — romantic, platonic, and for ourselves — as an anchor for whatever this material experience is supposed to be. This plays out a variety of ways. “Neutrogena Spektor” rages against the absurdity of other people’s aesthetic standards (“This cystic acne doesn’t look so good when it’s on me / But I don’t care, it really doesn’t matter to me…”) while “Kno U” acknowledges that our personal experiences carry more weight than superficial social perceptions (“They don’t know you like they think they do / They can’t see the things that you’ve been through…”). Elsewhere, “Footloose Cannonball Brothers” features a laidback acoustic strum, a punchy drum machine, and a hefty kiss-off to outgrowing the clout chasers in our lives (“But evеrybody knows, it’s not a secret / You’re acting likе you’re sponsored by Adidas / But you’re not fooling me…”). In this respect, the message is clear: Be you, the best version of you, because the version of yourself that is uniquely you is unlike anyone else.

These may not be the most mysterious truths but Origami Angel key in on something very important — with the last two years of global upheaval it’s easy to lose sight of the simple stuff. It’s easy to be hypercritical, feeling like we should be projecting a kind of cool stoicism when what we really need is comfort. “Caught in the Moment” illustrates the grace of late night Taco Bell runs with someone you care about, because maybe that kind of creature comfort warms your bones and deepens that connection. According to Heagy and Doherty, the value menu is ancillary, it’s the company that matters — warts and all. “Blanket Statement” features a kind of reassurance that maybe no one has *this* figured out, that the need to hide our imperfections is as compulsive as it is universal (“I keep my room just like my life / A fuckin’ mess and out of sight…”). These are just a few examples. While Gami Gang isn’t the first album to deal with these themes, the group is able to demonstrate the many forms love can take where we take a moment to be kind. The album mines countless shared experiences and strange happenings that bring people together — pop-culture references, disruptive front door evangelism, fast food, Pokémon — viewing them all as valid ways to cultivate acceptance and gratitude for those that make our lives special in the midst of struggle.

Throughout Gami Gang, Origami Angel posit that being here, together, is enough, even when considering the physical and temporal limitations of our chaotic world. Nothing gold can stay, and the group explores this sentiment on “Greenbelt Station,” a tender ballad on transition and the compassion in letting go (“I think of where you are now / I know you’re happier there / That’s all I want / That’s all I need…”). The song supposedly takes its name from two metro lines in D.C. that serve as a common stop for people to transfer from D.C.’s public transit system to Maryland’s. That landmark enriches the song but also points out that there are all these little things we collect through our shared experiences that can take us back to the big moments of our lives, through the countless transitions we’ll experience.

However, as wonderful as those anchors are, they are ultimately ephemeral. Impermanence emerges on the wide-scope closing track “gg,” which features a sweeping Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness-inspired guitar riff, thunderous drums, and one last reminder that the journey comes back around again when everything comes to its natural conclusion:

“And you’ll fall
Through the sky
Only getting faster and hotter
I will be the parachute
To guide you safely to the water
And it may not be the you I’m used to
Some things remain the same
Like your hair, your touch, your smile, your voice, your eyes
The way you say goodbye…”

We all wonder what the final playback of our lives will look like when it’s all said and done. Living through a global pandemic has put that front and center for all of us, in very different ways. In that respect, maybe The Great Reset was really a re-alignment of expectations, a re-framing of the lives we want to live, the people we want to be with, and the persons we want to become. That’s extremely valuable. It’s hard to make sense of it in the present, and it’s not always easy to choose joy over despair, but moving through the fear together seems like an infinitely more appealing option than the alternative. Over 20 tracks of whip-hard riffs, it feels like Origami Angel feel the same.

Ultimately, Gami Gang proposes that the act of eschewing fear, exhaustion, and pain is a communal one — a radical choice at a time where we are forced into semi-physical isolation. Still, it’s an album about feelings that defy our current material limitations. Gami Gang is a record explicitly named after the love Heagy, Doherty, and their fans have for each other, a kind of love that celebrates life with other people and the strangeness that comes along with it. It is a symbol of the enduring power of connectivity, an invitation to cherish the shared experiences we accumulate throughout our lives. It asks us to collaborate with one another because when we have to say goodbye, we’ll only be left with the feelings of where we’ve been, rather than the things we’ve owned or have been told to desire. Here’s to hoping that in the end, and despite the struggle, we can appreciate the joy of viewing our lives with the same zeal we had while living them — alongside those that mean the most to us.

In addition to Gami Gang, here are my 30 favorite releases from 2021:

• Beach Fossils | The Other Side of Life: Piano Ballads (Bayonet Records)
• Boldy James & The Alchemist | Bo Jackson (Self-Released)
• Cassandra Jenkins | On Phenomenal Nature (Ba Da Bing!)
• Citizen | Life in Your Glass World (Run For Cover Records)
• Deafheaven | Infinite Granite (Sargent House)
• Every Time I Die | Radical (Epitaph)
• Fiddlehead | Between The Richness (Run For Cover Records)
• For Your Health | In Spite Of (Twelve Gauge Records)
• Gatecreeper | An Unexpected Reality (Closed Casket Activities)
• Genghis Tron | Dream Weapon (Relapse)
• Japanese Breakfast | Jubilee (Dead Oceans)
• Julien Baker | Little Oblivions (Matador)
• Kacey Musgraves | star-crossed (Interscope / UMG Nashville)
• Lil Nas X | Montero (Columbia)
• Mannequin Pussy | Perfect EP (Epitaph)
• Midwife | Luminol (The Flenser)
• Origami Angel | Gami Gang (Counter Intuitive Records)
• Olivia Rodrigo | Sour (Geffen / Interscope)
• 파란노을 (Parannoul) | To See the Next Part of the Dream (Self-Released)
• Pinkshift | Saccharine EP (Self-Released)
• Portrayal of Guilt | We Are Always Alone (Closed Casket Activities)
• SeeYouSpaceCowboy | The Romance of Affliction (Pure Noise)
• Slant | 1집 (Iron Lung Records)
• Sun June | Somewhere (Run For Cover Records)
• Turnstile | Glow On (Roadrunner)
• Tyler, the Creator | CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST (Columbia)
• Vince Staples | Vince Staples (Blacksmith / Capitol / EMI / Motown )
• The Weather Station | Ignorance (Fat Possum Records)
• Wild Pink | A Billion Little Lights (Royal Mountain)
• Weezer | Van Weezer (Atlantic / Crush)

Originally published January 18, 2022 on Medium.