Album Premiere: "HUMANS!" by Night Court

Vancouver, BC, Canada loser punk power trio, Night Court, has album #3 ready to go! Humans! will be released on 12” vinyl LP and digital long player on June 9, 2023, via Canada’s Debt Offensive Records and Snappy Little Numbers Quality Audio Recordings in the USA.

Jiffy Marx is one of my most favorite people that I haven’t actually met in real life. Text, email, facetime, etc but no high fives or hugs just yet. We met by chance when his band Autogramm were looking for a US label to help release their first 7” which set in motion the machinations of a long distance buddy-ship with Jiffy Marx that is now in its 5th year. I’ve helped him with a solo record and have been steadily helping release recordings by his most prolific band to date, Vancouver Canada’s Night Court. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Debt Offensive Records on said records and corresponding with Dave-O and Emilor (the other 2/3 of the band) as Night Court continues to pummel the musical landscape with their latest release- HUMANS! The album which is coming out June 9th contains more of the catchiest nuggets of no-nonsense garagey punked up rock and roll. It is now my honor to conduct this extremely professional and well thought out interview with the band via electronic mail over the world wide web.

- Chuck Coffey (aka Charlie Continental- SPELLS, Snappy Little Numbers)

Chuck: How did you land on the band name Night Court while simultaneously deciding that all of your releases were going to be titled after various life forms found on Planet Earth?

Jiffy: As lore would have it the top two band names we landed on was Night Court and Nervous Birds and I’m pretty sure we basically agreed that either would make a fine band name or album title and then maybe we polled some friends, yourself included i think, to see which one people preferred? So in another world, dimension or universe the band is named Nervous Birds and the duology is called Night Court but the artwork is the same. Doesn’t really make as much sense when I say it out loud so maybe that’s how we landed where we did..?

Chuck: Was Night Court a potential band concept before the pandemic hit? Or was it born out of songwriting and sharing during isolation?

Dave-O: Jiffy and I had been kicking around the idea of starting another band (besides Jiffy Marker) for a while pre-pandemic but the shutdown(s) really gave us the opportunity to open the songwriting floodgates and the songs haven’t stopped flowing since! Which is handy because one of the ideas we were kicking around was to be really prolific…which, in hindsight, is maybe an odd thing to decide to be but here we are!

Chuck: You spent the better part of 30-some songs telling us about Nervous Birds (! One & ! Two) and their place in the world. With your new album, “Humans!”, what can we expect to learn about the meat sack water bag bipeds that share the air with all those Nervous Birds?

Jiffy: Having come up in the mid 90s PC hardcore scene we all learned long ago that non-human animals=good and people=shit.

Emilor: I saw a perfect description for humans. As we are 70% water, we are essentially cucumbers with anxiety. The science checks out.

Chuck: Night Court aficionados no doubt know by now that you’re huge fans of the 90’s Washington, DC, USA band, Circus Lupus. You’ve mentioned it in interviews and paid homage to the band via the underground smash hit song, ‘Circus Of Wolves’. Is Circus Lupus your favorite Dischord band then? If yes, just answer “yes” and then take a water or restroom break (wash your hands!). If not, please elaborate as to who is your favorite and why.

Jiffy: For me Circus Lupus is important because two members, probably most importantly their singer Chris Thomson, went on to form The Monorchid who are one of my all time favourite bands. And although Dischord did release their first album, I don’t consider them a “Dischord band” since they also had releases on Gravity and Touch and Go among others.. I’d be a liar anyway if I didn’t say Minor Threat. Obviously not the most original answer but buying their first album on tape cassette when I was 15 was life changing. I had already been listening to punk for a few years and even playing in bands already but getting that tape and getting into that album was life changing. It was like learning to ollie, I just realized this is what i wanna do and never looked back.

Dave-O: My friend Carla made me a mixtape waaay back in the day that pretty much introduced me to Dischord. I had already dabbled a bit in Minor Threat but hearing Circus Lupus and Jawbox and Rites of Spring for the first time was mind-blowing; I didn’t know you could make music like that! This is a tough question since Dischord’s catalogue is impeccable, but the simple answer for me is Fugazi. They were loud, beautiful, angular, groovy and smart – everything I have ever wanted from a band and I have been trying to make loud, beautiful, angular, groovy and smart music ever since (emphasis on trying;)

Emilor: I like Beefeater & Q and Not U

Jiffy: Q and Not U was on Dischord? You win, I didn’t know that and I’ve never even heard of Beefeater?

Emilor: Beefeater is rad, check ‘em out!

Chuck: You don’t really sound like Circus Lupus. Is there any sort of wavelength-type connection or influence that the band has posthumously departed onto you to make Night Court the refreshingly lively and prolific band you’ve become in such a short amount of time?

Dave-O: No, we don’t really sound like them but I hear their influence throughout our stuff…Chris Hamley’s guitar playing helped influence me to be ‘notey-er’ (as opposed to straight bar chords) but like Jiffy said, Chris Thomson is the stick that stirs the drink from Fury to Coffin Pricks. So I guess to answer your question, I’d say that when we’re faced with a songwriting quandary, we kinda ask WWCTD? and usually the answer is “do something kinda weird and it’ll probably sound cooler”.

Chuck: Do you think you’ll have more to say about Humans! after this album, or will you be ready to approach a different Terran life form and then teach us about it through song?

Emilor: For about the last 15 years, I have been toying with the idea of tardigrades presented as superheroes. Perhaps a romantic opus as seen through the eyes of a blobfish.

Jiffy: I had to google “Terran life form” lol but our next release after the album is actually all about ghosts and ghouls and monsters. It’s an EP coming out on Halloween!

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