All-around Breakdown: Angelo Celli’s 2015​-​2023 Works In Regress

Angelo Celli atop an illustrated background (SOURCE: Angelo Celli, photographer unknown)

Angelo Celli (Bracket, Guilty Party, The Good Life Crisis) recently dropped his first collection of solo music on which he’s singing, too, exclusively on Bandcamp called 2015-2023 Works In Regress. I’ve been a fan of Bracket since their fantastic return to form with Fat Wreck Chords, Too Old to Die Young (2019) and was a fan of Guilty Party’s brief string of material. So, when I saw Angelo dropped 2015-2023 Works In Regress a couple weeks ago, I almost immediately hit him up to do a comprehensive track-by-track breakdown. Take it away, Angelo…

I joined Bracket in the late 90’s and it took me until about 2004 to write my first song, a tune that ended up on Requiem, our 2006 album. It took me until 2014 to, actually, *SING* a song I wrote, a couple of which ended up on our album, Hold Your Applause. From then on, between Bracket (and later, Guilty Party) records, I would occasionally record ideas or covers for fun. Finally, in November 2023, I gathered everything that was mildly “presentable” and released them together, digitally, for free, on Bandcamp. Hopefully, fans of my bands or fans of quirky home recordings by aging musicians can appreciate this!

The Beach Boys are one of my biggest influences, especially, their late 60’s/early 70’s albums. Anyone reading this should listen to Friends and hear their far-superior version of this song. One of my favorite album openers—simple, comforting, and pretty. Not mine, theirs.

Naming songs is always hard for me, so I tend to go with whatever phrase pops in my head. This song kinda felt a little [The] Flaming Lips-ish to me, so calling it “Flailing Limbs” was funny to me. I think with the lyrics, I was kind of going for a Science Fiction-ish, Lost In Space vibe? I don’t know. The whole song was built around that distorted pulsing synth thing.

This song is probably more fun to sing than it is to, actually, listen to? This was just one of those instances where I wanted to record a Hank Williams song and this is what happened… people should probably choose to listen to Hank Williams, though.

This is a demo for a Guilty Party song that never happened. Guilty Party is the band [that] I started in 2021 with Rosie Gonce. We released six songs across two EP’s and, then, kind of stopped when Rosie moved to another state… but we, actually, have a record that we started recording before she moved and should be finished pretty soon-ish. Back to this song, it didn’t make the cut, but here it is.

This song is one of my favorites from these home recordings; like, the harmonies and the toy piano-sounding thing. Rosie from Guilty Party was a fan of this song and suggested we Pop-punk it up for Guilty Party, which we did! It’s on our EP, Stage Fright, just called “Invisible Man,” as we traded the 3/4 timing for a kinda [The] Ramones-y version.

I only met Tony Sly [(R.I.P.) from No Use for A Name] a couple of times, but he came across as a genuine, humble guy. We played a few shows with them during the More Betterness era, so those songs are lodged in my head, but his solo stuff was good, too. This song in particular just has a really good melody and feels both sad and kinda uplifting.

OK, so I’m in this band called Bracket. We released an album called The Last Page in 2016 that is just one 70-minute song, but really, it’s like a lot of parts and ideas strung together. It’s my favorite thing we’ve done and, also, the format is not most people’s favorite, since it’s presented as one long song, making re-listening to certain parts kind of a chore. Anyway, one of the parts that I contributed (somewhere in the 70 minutes, I couldn’t find it haha) was the source of inspiration for “Everything Eye.” Basically, I wanted to flesh it out a bit and give it full-song treatment, which, I guess, I did. I used my friend (and Guilty Party bassist) Alex [Alcantra-Kouninos]’s baritone guitar to mimic a fuzzy bassline and very hastily (as usual) threw some pre-programmed GarageBand drums.

I can't remember who [wrote] this song, but I first heard the Kitty Wells version.  In true Punk fashion, I discovered Kitty Wells through Social Distortion.  Now, hopefully, someone can discover Social Distortion through this Kitty Wells cover?

Some weird lo-fi effect on the guitar, not sure what I was thinking there.  “You Still Believe In Me” by The Beach Boys is one of my favorite songs and, I guess, this is sort of named after that.  It doesn't really sound like The Beach Boys, but the layered harmonies were definitely influenced by them.

Another Guilty Party demo idea that didn’t make it. I’m a big fan of [The] Marked Men/Radioactivity and in my mind, was kind of inspired by them.

The first Angelo solo song. It was pretty scary! Marty [Gregori] (Bracket) really encouraged me to start recording some of my ideas, so he’s mostly to blame! Probably recorded in early 2015?

The first song from one of my favorite NOFX albums, [So Long & Thanks for All The Shoes,] but with mandolins and recorded kinda badly. Enjoy!

This is a demo I recorded for a Guilty Party song; a full-band version of this song just might show up on a future Guilty Party release. Shhhhh, don’t tell anyone!

The Muffs have been one of my favorite bands for a very long time. Kim Shattuck’s song-writing was so consistent, yet continued to evolve, across all of their albums. I wanted to cover something of theirs and settled on this song from their album, Alert Today, Alive Tomorrow. I sent it to Kim through Facebook Messenger a few years ago and she was kind enough to respond with an encouraging, “you made it your own!” comment.

This is a weird one, although, the chords and melody are pretty regular. The intro kinda sounds like a super-lo-fi “Wonderful Christmastime” by Paul McCartney. I used a Moog [Music] app on my phone for the synthy stuff and some other app for the “beats.” There’s a banjolele in there, too.

One of the really early ones, around the time I recorded “It’s Pretty Scary.” I’m not a fan of the lyrics, but I rarely am. I always pictured this working as a full-band song, which never happened. There’s some mandolin in the bridge, if you “squint” your ears.

My old computer and hard drive kinda crashed in the middle of recording this. I decided to keep it as-is, rather than try to figure out how to resume working on it in a different program. The guitar I used is a guitalele, I think it’s called? Six strings, but tiny and tuned A-D-G-C-E-A. This song was written by someone, not me or Willie Nelson, but the version I was familiar with was Willie Nelson’s and this version here is by me.

This song was kinda (huh, I use that word a lot…) a tribute to my band, Guilty Party, when our drummer, Rosie, was preparing to move and leave the band. It sort of eulogizes our little trajectory from start to finish.

One of the goofiest things I’ve recorded. Rosie & I had a tendency to make multiple digital flyers for every show we played. One time, she made one with a Full House theme and we often would jokingly play the Full House theme song at practice. One thing led to another and I made some sort of Full House theme song advertisement for a show at [924] Gilman Street.