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| Photo courtesy of We're Trying Records. |
What everyone loves about emo music, myself included, is the ability that its players have to dive into their own turmoil, traumas, and emotional tempests and surface with blindingly relatable insights into their character and personage, which, when conveyed to the listener, feel like they might as well have been scraped from the bedrock of their own soul. Observant of this tradition, Celebration Guns has flourished as peaceful cultivators of many plots of thorny yet lovely desert roses, cultivated from the cradle of self-recognition, to be nurtured in the crepuscular gold and yellow beams of the observer's sympathetic apprehension of the lacerations and petals of their own delicate and damaged, wild and badly pruned interior fernery. Yet, despite the pain, the blood that runs from one's palm when they grip a rose, Celebration Guns keeps returning to the nape of their nursery, and beckoning us to follow in their sometimes maudlin, often exuberant footsteps. For as much as inquisitions into the heart are often harvesters of pain, their stinging intuition is irrefutable evidence of the proof of our existence, and the shared context of the human condition. What Keeps Us Coming Back is Celebration Guns' second LP, first for We're Trying Records, and nearly a decade down-the-road, and a distant ancestor to their 2018 LP (Probably) Worth It. Where earlier releases pondered why, their latest LP affirms eternal reasons for their return. Need I say more? I think not, as vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and founding member Justin Weir has plenty to say for himself...
What Keeps You Coming Back to Celebration Guns over a decade into your career as a band...
Playing music is the only thing that I know and the only thing that I occasionally feel like I’m good at. I started playing in bands in 1997 when I was 15 years old. From there, I played live in at least 20 different bands with genres ranging from pop punk, ska, metalcore, post-hardcore, indie, dance punk, orgcore, and, of course..emo. Most of these bands lasted a year or less, the longer running ones maybe 2-3 years. Celebration Guns was the first band where it felt like we were actually reaching the ears of a few people (this may have a correlation with the rise of streaming and social media, etc, around 2013) and we were receiving consistent positive feedback locally. Another factor in keeping this train rolling is that the genre of emo hit me really hard around 1999 (Jimmy Eat World’s Clarity played a big part in cementing that for me), and it never fully left me. In many of the other bands I played in, I found myself trying to force an emo song or at least a part into those bands’ songs. It was the style that I knew and felt best, so the songwriting came more naturally to me.
...and why was this selected as the title for the new album?
The embarrassing but honest answer is that for a year or longer I had been hoping to come across a phrase (or even just a random collection of words) that sounded interesting enough to use for an album title. I finally found it while I was reading The First Bad Man by Miranda July, where protagonist was explaining to an unrequited love that she felt she knew him in a past life. His album title worthy response was “What keeps us coming back?” I initially took What Keeps Us Coming Back to mean coming back to a past relationship or life situation that clearly wasn’t meant to be. I just really like that it can take on multiple meanings. Like your question above, I kind of hoped everyone didn’t immediately read it as “why is this band still putting out music?” but if they do, fair question.
Tyler Flanagan, who designed our album and single art, came up with the idea of putting a house on the cover (likely not meant as a reference to the popular “house on the emo album cover” trend, as he isn’t necessarily in that scene). He also came up with the man running into the building, a reference to the album theme of coming back to a bad situation. Keeping this in mind, it could also apply to Celebration Guns running back to the genre where having a house on an album cover is all the rage (we did it with 2021’s The Visiting Years)
Do you consider What Keeps Us Coming Back to be part of an anthology with any of your other releases, or is it more stand-alone and self-contained?
What Keeps Us Coming Back is very much a stand-alone and self-contained release as it is our first album with an all-new lineup (besides me). The only anthology to speak of is the fact that we had plans to record LP2 two other times between 2020 and 2022 that turned into 4 EPs and 2 Splits*
*Starting in 2018 we recorded 9 songs with our 2 nd of 3 drummers Peter Coleman Jr., but only half of the songs were finished by the time COVID started, so we released those songs as 2 Eps: …on aging gracelessly (2020) and The Visiting Years (2021). Similar with the 12 songs we recorded in 2021 & 2022 (original drummer Timothy O’Brien back in the band) we decided to spread the songs out between Midlife Vices EP (2022), Split with A Place for Owls (2023), The Ultimate Emo Album Split with Swiss Army Wife and Avec Plaisir (2024) and Enough Already EP (2024). So, in the sense that we have been attempting to release a proper LP2 since 2020, all 32 of those songs may work as a sort of an anthology of LP2.
What was the hardest song to write on this album, and conversely, which was the easiest?
The hardest song to write was "Regrets, Regurgitated." It was originally written in 2018 and felt a little outside of the fast-paced, mathy and chaotic music we were trying to write around that time, so I never introduced it to the band. While trying to think of old demos to go with the new songs we wrote for this album, this song came up and the rest of the band had a good feeling about it.
The band wasn’t thrilled with a meandering riff break I had written later in the song, so I changed that into a more dreamy/dark section with vocals added (right after the 1st chorus). We also decided to change the guitar only intro to piano, which was mostly complicated in finding the best way to capture the sound and make it blend with the decidedly heavier approach this song has compared to the rest of the album.
The easiest song was likely "Magpies in Disguise." It is one of the more straightforward songs we’ve ever recorded. I started playing that palm muted part and was hearing Frightened Rabbit type vocals over it (the song was called “he frighten dagnabit” later shortened to “dagnabit” until a while after we finished recording it), and for once I decided to stop myself from overwriting the music and focus my attention on the lyrics. I hope I got one of those 2 things right. Did the track "Maudolin" get its name because of the mandolin parts in it, or did you add those parts because of the name? Either way, I'm pretty curious about the intersection of the themes of this track and the mandolin parts, as I (I think others probably as well) don't typically think of it as a somber or lacermuse instrument, but it does take on these qualities in your performance to a degree.
I’m not sure why I chose to include the name of the instrument that features heavily in 2 of the songs on the album, directly into the song title (Vibraphone for the Perpetually at Home is the other). Yes, the fact that the foundation of the song was written on mandolin plays heavily into that title, but I also felt like the lyrics were a bit maudlin at time. And I like puns that aren’t quite funny or clever, so here we are.
The self-pitying, lonesome and hopeless feelings in the lyrics do feel a little disparate from the mostly upbeat and happy feeling of the song. We made sure to throw in a gloomy bridge and a weepy sounding outro to balance things out. We have a song from (Probably) Worth it aka LP1 called Move On that uses the mandolin in a similar way, wringing all the joy and sadness out of it throughout. So when we went about finally writing songs for the true LP2, it felt like it was time for a second mandolin song.
What is a "Why Detective" the going rate for someone considering a career pivot (potentially in middle age)?
The song has everything to do with making assumptions about why a person doesn’t like you back the way you think they should. It’s not you, it’s me?? You don’t have to tell me twice! But I need to know more: was it my looks? My neurotic personality? My repeated questions? I need to know why. I was considering working “lie detector” into a silly sounding phrase, but instead I went with a Justin classic: a bad pun involving a rhyme.
Also worth noting: this is one of three songs on the album that was arranged around some fantastic noodly guitar parts that Johl wrote (the other two being Johl Rides Again and Here’s the Thing). Johl refuses to comment other than to answer your original question and say: “Why Detecting isn’t free: it pays a buck o five.”
What is your favorite bird-related conspiracy theory, and how does it relate to "Magpies in Disguise"? On a more serious note, how does the symbolism of the magpie emerge as a metaphor in the lyrics of this track?
The birds are spies, they report to the trees is one of my favorite band names. That name feels like a big conspiracy theory that explains itself in one sentence. Johl actually came up with the song title “Magpies in Disguise”, but when I asked him to elaborate, he declined, claiming that explaining song titles is “for the birds.”
On behalf of Johl, I will say that magpies in disguise was a saying I was not familiar with until he suggested it. It refers to magpies being easily distracted by shiny things. The song is based on my real-life marriage (spoiler – there was also a divorce) and the wedding that took place, and how we were both excited and attracted to the ultimate big shiny object of marriage: a beautiful wedding. As we all know, there’s a lot of work to come after the wedding and that’s where myself and many others have been unable to follow through. So, I guess that would make me one of the magpies. That’s deep.
What machines are replacing guillotines, and how does the enterprise-level adoption improve efficiencies headed into Q4? Big picture, what kind of social implosion as spectator sport are you describing on this track, and what do you hope the takeaway is for the listener?
The song name Machines Replacing Guillotines is a play on the name of a post-dance-punk band I played in from 2005 called Machines Replacing Teens (https://machinesreplacingteens.bandcamp.com/) My original plan was to make every song name on this album a pun around some of my prior band names. Thank goodness I didn’t follow through on that one.
Lyrically, I was thinking about how I have consistently failed at trying to master the art of social media as a way of connecting within a music community or promoting our band. We first started kind of reaching people and bands outside of AZ around early 2020 when we started working with Chillwavve Records (now defunct: https://cwrecords.bandcamp.com/). When I was in my early 20’s, in the early 2000s, I was all over the message boards and confidently being ridiculous and outgoing. Bringing that energy to 2020 and beyond at the ripe old age of 38 was a different story.
I almost didn’t want to put this song on the album because I didn’t want anyone to mistake it as an “anti-cancel culture” type of thing. It’s just a straightforward explanation of how I kept wanting to be bold and post thoughts and ideas along with promoting the band, but I came onboard this scene when people were being SUPER CANCELLED daily. Mostly for very valid reasons, but we all know that occasionally people get “cancelled” on the same level for saying something-off putting or offensive receiving basically the same level of cancellation as the worst offenders would. So, the machines acting as guillotines are, I suppose, social media – public execution by cancellation type of thing. Yeah, a little embarrassing. But it’s also kind of catchy? I don’t know, don’t cancel me over this
I'm really feeling the dusty, alt-country amble of "The First Strut Is The Deepest"? Do you listen to a lot of country/folk? What were the inspirations for the stylistic framing and execution of this track? Addendum: are you referencing the original or the Sheryl Crow cover?
This song was written back in 2008 and was the first full song that I ever wrote and then recorded using a computer. I used my college graduation money to buy a 2007 MacBook, an acoustic guitar and a midi controller. I packed this first song full of every single fake instrument I could fit from the selections on Garageband on that midi controller, and it turned into a cute song to sneak onto the end of mix CDs I made for crushes over the years.
We attempted to recreate the song using real instruments this time, including: acoustic guitar, a cajon kit, banjo, Suzuki flute recorder, melodica, stylophone and I’m sure I’m forgetting something. It’s the only song where Johl and Justin both did back up harmonies and we are pretty happy with how it turned out. I like how it really stands out as something different for this album
Regarding the song title, I think I’m referencing the Rod Stewart version. I don’t know if that song was around more in 2008, or if I was just in denial about the Sheryl Crow version, but back then I would randomly belt out the chorus in my best Rod Stewart impression. The song title pun was what I saved the Garageband demo file as: it was literally my first “strut” at recording my own music, but was it the deepest? Time won’t tell.
What machines are replacing guillotines, and how does the enterprise-level adoption improve efficiencies headed into Q4? Big picture, what kind of social implosion as spectator sport are you describing on this track, and what do you hope the takeaway is for the listener?
The song name Machines Replacing Guillotines is a play on the name of a post-dance-punk band I played in from 2005 called Machines Replacing Teens (https://machinesreplacingteens.bandcamp.com/) My original plan was to make every song name on this album a pun around some of my prior band names. Thank goodness I didn’t follow through on that one.
Lyrically, I was thinking about how I have consistently failed at trying to master the art of social media as a way of connecting within a music community or promoting our band. We first started kind of reaching people and bands outside of AZ around early 2020 when we started working with Chillwavve Records (now defunct: https://cwrecords.bandcamp.com/). When I was in my early 20’s, in the early 2000s, I was all over the message boards and confidently being ridiculous and outgoing. Bringing that energy to 2020 and beyond at the ripe old age of 38 was a different story.
I almost didn’t want to put this song on the album because I didn’t want anyone to mistake it as an “anti-cancel culture” type of thing. It’s just a straightforward explanation of how I kept wanting to be bold and post thoughts and ideas along with promoting the band, but I came onboard this scene when people were being SUPER CANCELLED daily. Mostly for very valid reasons, but we all know that occasionally people get “cancelled” on the same level for saying something-off putting or offensive receiving basically the same level of cancellation as the worst offenders would. So, the machines acting as guillotines are, I suppose, social media – public execution by cancellation type of thing. Yeah, a little embarrassing. But it’s also kind of catchy? I don’t know, don’t cancel me over this
I'm really feeling the dusty, alt-country amble of "The First Strut Is The Deepest"? Do you listen to a lot of country/folk? What were the inspirations for the stylistic framing and execution of this track? Addendum: are you referencing the original or the Sheryl Crow cover?
This song was written back in 2008 and was the first full song that I ever wrote and then recorded using a computer. I used my college graduation money to buy a 2007 MacBook, an acoustic guitar and a midi controller. I packed this first song full of every single fake instrument I could fit from the selections on Garageband on that midi controller, and it turned into a cute song to sneak onto the end of mix CDs I made for crushes over the years.
We attempted to recreate the song using real instruments this time, including: acoustic guitar, a cajon kit, banjo, Suzuki flute recorder, melodica, stylophone and I’m sure I’m forgetting something. It’s the only song where Johl and Justin both did back up harmonies and we are pretty happy with how it turned out. I like how it really stands out as something different for this album
Regarding the song title, I think I’m referencing the Rod Stewart version. I don’t know if that song was around more in 2008, or if I was just in denial about the Sheryl Crow version, but back then I would randomly belt out the chorus in my best Rod Stewart impression. The song title pun was what I saved the Garageband demo file as: it was literally my first “strut” at recording my own music, but was it the deepest? Time won’t tell.
You're free to choose how you want, but if P.P. Arnold doesn't win this thing I'm going to be very disappointed.
Are your chord progressions mostly inspired by other rock and pop music, or do you have influences outside of these as well? If so, how would you say they manifest?
A lot of our songs don’t have actual chords in them, it’s just a whole lot of riffs dancing around each other with bass guitar and drums creating a driving force to keep everything moving. On the occasions that we do use chords, or if we’re just considering the general sound and feel of the riffs or guitar tapping in our songs, I’m sure you can point to bands like Maps & Atlases or TTNG as an influence.
Generally, writing a Celebration Guns song starts with one riff or repeating chord sequence, looped in Garageband. At that point, I will start adding more parts: bass guitar, another guitar part and a general idea of what the drums should be doing.
Once all of THAT is in place, I will start over with another riff, and keep going with this process until I have 3-4 loops that hopefully fit and flow together nicely. When Johl contributes guitar parts, the sections of the song are built around those. Vocals start out as a melody with placeholder lyrics, which I will later try and fit lyrics over.
Are mathy chord parts antithetical to more traditional pop structures, or how do these overlap and complement each other in your mind?
One of my favorite things about Celebration Guns is the challenge of taking songs that rarely have an obvious foundational chord structure and trying to mold them into something catchy (which would likely be influenced by traditional pop structures). We tend to have brighter and “happier” sounding songs more than dark or gloomy sounding songs, although we have occasionally found ways to make our math pop bops into math aggro-bummers (see: "You Aren’t the Only One" from 2018’s (Probably) Worth it aka LP1)
A lot of our songs don’t have actual chords in them, it’s just a whole lot of riffs dancing around each other with bass guitar and drums creating a driving force to keep everything moving. On the occasions that we do use chords, or if we’re just considering the general sound and feel of the riffs or guitar tapping in our songs, I’m sure you can point to bands like Maps & Atlases or TTNG as an influence.
Generally, writing a Celebration Guns song starts with one riff or repeating chord sequence, looped in Garageband. At that point, I will start adding more parts: bass guitar, another guitar part and a general idea of what the drums should be doing.
Once all of THAT is in place, I will start over with another riff, and keep going with this process until I have 3-4 loops that hopefully fit and flow together nicely. When Johl contributes guitar parts, the sections of the song are built around those. Vocals start out as a melody with placeholder lyrics, which I will later try and fit lyrics over.
Are mathy chord parts antithetical to more traditional pop structures, or how do these overlap and complement each other in your mind?
One of my favorite things about Celebration Guns is the challenge of taking songs that rarely have an obvious foundational chord structure and trying to mold them into something catchy (which would likely be influenced by traditional pop structures). We tend to have brighter and “happier” sounding songs more than dark or gloomy sounding songs, although we have occasionally found ways to make our math pop bops into math aggro-bummers (see: "You Aren’t the Only One" from 2018’s (Probably) Worth it aka LP1)
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| Photo courtesy of We're Trying Records |
What are your thoughts on personal growth and the necessity of change?
My thought on personal growth is that it’s a nice idea but super difficult in practice, at least for me. It’s something I write about, read about it, think about, but have a tough time manifesting into everyday life. Instead of growing, I think I do a lot more ruminating on the things I need to grow from. In this way, the lyrics on this album and many of our other songs are my form of therapeutically telling myself “You know what you need to do, buddy. You just need to go ahead and do it. Any day now, pal, just go ahead and get started on that growing”
Change is necessary when there are patterns in life that are preventing you from achieving what is important to you, or potentially harmful or self-sabotaging. I don’t always think change for the sake of changing is necessary. Sometimes it feels like the only way to feel like we are succeeding in life is to prove that we have changed over time and can prove it to that person we know 15-20 years ago when we run into them at The Gap (the only place I like to run into people from the past) or when they take a quick glance at our online presence to confirm whether we are still the same chump they knew back when. Ultimately, change if you need to change for survival, but not for the sake of proving something to anyone but yourself.
Do you think it's possible for a person to change their nature, or do you think they will always be essentially the same?
Human nature sounds to me like something you are born with, something that you’re stuck with unless you do some growing via your natural progression through life or by working to influence a change in yourself. I think there are some aspects of a person’s nature will stay essentially the same, and there are times that trying to deny your nature will feel false to yourself and those around you.
If there is something in your nature that is holding you back or making you feel stuck in a pattern, I think it is (hopefully) possible to shape it into something better. I also worry that trying to force change away from the person you are could do more harm than good, depending on whatever the intentions may be behind pushing for that change (i.e. not being authentic or true to the self that makes you who you are).
In the film Hamlet 2, Steve Coogan's character Dana Marschz in an attempt to encourage one of his young thespian students states, "...you're going to have a magical life. Because no matter where you go, it'll always be better than Tucson." In your opinion, what is the worst place in Arizona, and why?
I saw that movie soon after it came out and all that I can remember, unfortunately, is wishing it was a lot funnier than it was. I probably had the wrong expectations. Johl did say he thinks about that quote a lot but declined to further comment because of the time Steve Coogan refused to autograph his Hey Arnold! backpack when Steve “The Cougar” Coogan visited Johl’s community college a few years ago.
I don’t think the Tucson hate is warranted at all, and the only popular culture refence I will accept related to that city is What We Do in the Shadows “Tucson, Arizonya”. The worst city is Scottsdale, particularly Old Town. Why? Come to AZ and spend a weekend there and you’ll see for yourself.
I saw that movie soon after it came out and all that I can remember, unfortunately, is wishing it was a lot funnier than it was. I probably had the wrong expectations. Johl did say he thinks about that quote a lot but declined to further comment because of the time Steve Coogan refused to autograph his Hey Arnold! backpack when Steve “The Cougar” Coogan visited Johl’s community college a few years ago.
I don’t think the Tucson hate is warranted at all, and the only popular culture refence I will accept related to that city is What We Do in the Shadows “Tucson, Arizonya”. The worst city is Scottsdale, particularly Old Town. Why? Come to AZ and spend a weekend there and you’ll see for yourself.
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| Spoiler from Hamlet 1. Sorry... |
What do you love most about the place you live?
The fall and winter seasons are kind of perfect here. As I respond to this, the expected high temperature today is 107 with 48% humidity, so you really caught me at a bad time to answer this. I’m not a huge desert scenery guy, but at the same time some of the mountains are nice to look at.
One important thing that people need to know about Arizona: there are areas about 1.5-3 hours away from the hot desert that have forests and cooler temperatures to escape to. I guess I’d have to say those are my favorite parts of Arizona: Prescott, Payson, Flagstaff, etc.
Do you have any midyear resolutions?
Our resolution is to finally get this album released! September 18th is when the full What Keeps Us Coming Back album comes out. We’re working on an album release show locally on October 23 rd where we will have vinyl, CDs and tapes to sell in person, but you can get them online as early as September 18th via We’re Trying Records. Also, we hope to get on the road early next year. Oh..was this
question not meant to be a space for self-promotion?* I’d say my resolution to get better at self-promoting, but who am I kidding. We’re 13 years in and I’ve always been awful at it.
*Editor: Oh no, it most definitely IS! Good job! You're well on your way to a better you.
