Night Birds

About

“I’m already over-caffeinated and mentally straining,” begins Night Birds vocalist Brian Gorsegner, as he prepares to discuss his band’s third album and Fat Wreck Chords debut, Mutiny At Muscle Beach . It’s really the perfect way to describe that record—the 12-song, 25-minute LP is an ADD -addled, surf-influenced, punk-rock adventure through Gorsegner & Co.’s experiences dealing with the rampant assholery they encounter in their day-to-day lives in suburban New Jersey and the surrounding areas. “I work in customer service, which is what fuels the majority of my hatred and my need for punk rock,” the 31-year-old singer explains. “The people I deal with on a daily basis completely destroy any hope I had for humanity. But it’s good; everybody needs fuel for their creativity. While there might not be any songs on Mutiny At Muscle Beach about specific customer-service experiences (“We had a set of lyrics for ‘Lapsed Catholics Need Discipline’ about customer service but we scratched it,” he admits), the album is chock-full of pop-culture references, from Kids In The Hall to horror movies to Seinfeld to professional wrestling—the latter of which Gorsegner says he didn’t know much about (he says his bandmates are far more knowledgeable on the topic), but after watching a documentary about now-retired WWE wrestler Mick Foley, he quickly connected with the artform. “This guy just destroys himself for his craft,” Gorsegner admits. “He doesn’t think about 10 years down the road, he just thinks about now, and he does what he loves to do because he’s passionate about it. He likes to put a smile on peoples’ faces and go out and destroy himself and be reckless—and a lot of punk rock that I love is the same kind of way. You don’t think about, ‘I shouldn’t do this because I might get hurt’ or ‘I shouldn’t write this because I might offend somebody.’” While Night Birds makes sure to bring that level of chaos to their live show, in the studio, it’s an entirely diferent story. The q