For Crashing Into Things bassist/vocalist Mike Isacson, the most fruitful creative times are often the darkest. In 2011, his wife left him and he was at a dead end, and he went to a show at what’s now Capital Ballroom. After the set, someone hollered his name. It was fellow-band-member-to-be Adrian Southward. One thing led to another, and Isacson eventually went to Pender Island, where Southward is from, to record some vocals that turned into the material on the local band’s self-titled debut album.
One of those songs, “(She Said) I’m Gonna Kill You,” details a night Isacson won’t soon forget.
“That was just kind of going back to when I was around 20 or so, and had a girlfriend for a little while in Fernwood there,” says Isacson. “Yeah, I got my dick pierced in front of a bunch of folks on Halloween evening.”
Isacson has been a fan of animation his whole life, so when he started writing a song about that fateful night, he thought it might also make a good music video. Although they used a Vancouver-based animator to make the video for “(She Said) I’m Gonna Kill You,” Isacson enjoys editing and making videos as well as making music.
“For the first album, we had two videos done, and I had other people make them; ever since then I’ve really gotten into making videos myself,” he says, adding that the videos have become a big part of his creative process.
Isacson calls Crashing Into Thing’s current sound “working class art rock.”
“When people hear us and try to come up with a comparison, the single band I hear most often is Talking Heads,” he says. “That was a reference point for us, but we’re heavier than Talking Heads. Some of our stuff gets quite heavy.”
Guitarist Kalev Mihkel Kaup has had “really, really serious heart issues for years,” says Isacson, and ended up getting a transplant in November of 2018. Isacson says that impacted the band’s latest work.
“The new album [Smaller than Death] is very much about mortality,” says Isacson.
Aside from Kaup’s heart transplant, Isacson had some health issues of his own.
“I didn’t know what the fuck was going on,” he says. “I don’t think it’s a super gloomy album, but it’s definitely heavier.”
Isacson had a 13-year hiatus from music when he was married but always figured he would get back into playing. And out of a dark period, creativity came.
“My ex-wife, the day that she told me she was leaving, I was completely devastated,” he says.
But from the trauma came Isacson’s most creative period.
“Even some of the stuff we’re still working on, it was actually written initially six or seven years ago,” he says. “It just hasn’t been worked out. It’s true—you go through those traumatic experiences and it can be, creatively, very fruitful.”
Crashing Into Things
8 pm Friday, March 8
$10, Wheelies Motorcycles (2620 Rock Bay Avenue)
wheeliesmotorcycles.ca