By Lou Bain
There are artists who spend entire careers polishing the edges off their music until every song slips past you like another shiny object on an endless playlist. Then there are the dangerous ones. The ones who don’t sand down the splinters because the splinters are the whole point.
Cello is one of those artists.
Forget the algorithm. Forget the manufactured vulnerability that has become its own marketing strategy. Marcello Valletta, the Pittsburgh singer-songwriter, poet, and performer recording under the name Cello, doesn’t sound like someone trying to fit into the music business. He sounds like someone trying to survive himself.
And somehow, that’s exactly why Singing to Serpents works.
This isn’t an album built for passive listening. It’s built from restless nights, obsessive thoughts, emotional collisions, and the beautiful mess that happens when someone decides they’re done pretending everything makes sense.
Cello has been open about living with Autism Spectrum Disorder and ADHD, but here’s the thing: he doesn’t wear those diagnoses like promotional stickers. They’re simply part of how he experiences the world, and the music reflects that reality without apology.
People love talking about neurodivergence in tidy little inspirational sound bites. Life isn’t tidy. Neither is Cello.
His mind races. His songs race with it.
Thoughts repeat because that’s what thoughts sometimes do. Emotions don’t politely take turns. They pile on top of one another until they become melody.
Listen to “Stay Here.” That repeated plea, “Won’t you stay here?”, isn’t just a chorus. It’s fixation. It’s memory refusing to leave. It’s every conversation you’ve replayed a thousand times wondering if saying one different sentence would’ve changed the ending.
That’s ADHD.
That’s autism.
That’s being human.
The remarkable thing is that Cello never tries to explain it away.
Instead, he turns it into art.
Before there was music, there was poetry. Before poetry, there was performance. Valletta has spent years chasing stories through different creative disciplines, and you hear every mile of that journey inside Singing to Serpents. These aren’t songs assembled by committee. They’re emotional documentaries.
“Faith” may be the album’s emotional knockout.
“I need strong faith in my abilities.”
On paper it’s a simple sentence.
Inside the song it becomes something almost heartbreaking.
Not because it’s dramatic.
Because it’s honest.
Everyone talks about believing in yourself like it’s a motivational poster hanging in a guidance counselor’s office. Cello understands that belief is often a daily negotiation. Sometimes hourly.
Sometimes every five minutes.
That struggle runs through the entire record.
“Sucks to Be Used” explodes with bitterness that slowly reveals itself as heartbreak wearing brass knuckles. “Cravings” captures obsession so vividly you almost feel your own pulse quicken. “Full Moon” turns romance into something mystical and dangerous, as though love itself has become a force of nature instead of a relationship.
It’s gloriously unstable.
And that’s exactly why it feels alive.
What makes Cello fascinating isn’t simply the music.
It’s the refusal to clean himself up for public consumption.
The modern music industry rewards branding. Artists become products. Personalities become content. Emotional pain gets compressed into thirty-second clips and motivational captions.
Cello walks straight past all of that.
He leaves the contradictions intact.
One minute he’s confident enough to sound untouchable. The next he’s questioning everything.
That’s real life.
You hear it not only in the lyrics but in the delivery. His voice doesn’t chase technical perfection. It chases emotional truth. Sometimes those two things intersect beautifully. Sometimes they collide.
Either way, you believe him.
And belief is becoming one of the rarest commodities in modern music.
Since the release of Singing to Serpents, listeners have begun discovering exactly what makes Cello different. The album has earned praise for its fearless songwriting, its literary lyricism, and its refusal to fit comfortably inside one genre. Critics have highlighted the emotional vulnerability running through tracks like “Stay Here” and “Faith,” while fans have connected deeply with his willingness to discuss autism, ADHD, mental health, and identity without reducing those experiences to slogans.
That’s success.
Not because streaming numbers say so.
Because connection says so.
Because somewhere there’s another kid whose brain never slows down.
Someone who replays conversations until sunrise.
Someone who feels everything at maximum volume.
Someone who finally hears a record that sounds like their own internal soundtrack.
That’s what Singing to Serpents ultimately becomes.
Not an album about autism.
Not an album about ADHD.
An album about what happens when an artist stops apologizing for experiencing the world differently, and discovers that the very things society calls weaknesses can become extraordinary creative strengths.
Cello isn’t singing to serpents because he expects them to change.
He’s singing because it’s the only honest thing left to do.
And if you’re willing to listen, you’ll discover that sometimes the most beautiful songs come from minds that refuse to follow everybody else’s rhythm.
