Rachel Bachman is back with a new song and video, her first release since last year’s full-length album, I’m All I’ves. Readers here will remember that Bachman is a blog favorite, charting on Jarvix’s Big 50 of 2018 with a glowing review. The Tulsa singer-songwriter’s signature charm and wit is in just about everything she touches, and that is no exception with her latest.
“Time Killer” is a fun number that dwells on the pesky mismatches of relationship dynamics, but it also decides that dwelling probably isn’t the best course of action. The chorus throws a clever twist on the song title by characterizing the situation as not a killer of time, but an eventual casualty of it.
On this outing, Bachman brings aboard the Better News Bears, which is a dazzling assortment of Tulsan backing band regulars that fill out her sound (namely Matt Magerkurth, Delaney Zumwalt, Chris Foster, Johnathan Rodriguez, Olivia McGraw, and Stephen Schultz). Unlike a lot of her previous work, which was more founded on solo overdubs in studio, “Time Killer” is a full band outing through and through, complete with performances from a couple of additional honorary Bears in Adrienne Gilley and Nicholas Foster.
The whole ensemble sounds delicious against Bachman’s trusty ukulele, with all the players contributing to a zesty blend of strings, rhodes style keys, drums, backing vocals, and even some subtle marimba. There’s also a step up in the mixing department compared to some of Bachman’s past work, and she doesn’t sacrifice her approachable DIY vibe to attain it, thanks to the efforts of Mike Gilliland at Auggy Reed Studios. Conor Robb did the mastering as well.
Rachel Bachman’s YouTube subscribers have had early access to the music video for a couple of days, but Make Oklahoma Weirder is proud to present it here for the first time to the general public. Watch “Time Killer” below.
The video, directed by Nicholas Foster, is a simple but effective one. Posted up in a circle of the band’s musicians, the video rotates continuously from player to player, soon revealing Bachman as vocalist and ukulele player alongside a literal teddy bear that clearly must be of the better news variety (Jordan Hehl gets credit as the on-set “bear handler”). As the circling continues, everyone begins to trade roles and instruments, but all of it is done off-screen. This is especially fun given that the entire video is shot in one long take.
If a production company were to do a music video like this, it probably wouldn’t take place in somebody’s house and would be more brightly lit. Here, though, one really gets a feel for the camaraderie and lack of pretense within the band. The video feels like something that was shot in an afternoon as a fun project. That especially comes through as the musicians increasingly ham it up while playing instruments that aren’t theirs and even instruments that don’t appear in the recording at all. One really gets the sense everyone had a ball here, and that joy is lovingly contagious.
“Time Killer” is getting the release show treatment tonight at one of Tulsa’s hottest new live music joints, Duet Jazz, which is located at 108 N Detroit. Attendees will be treated to a special remix of “Time Killer” by Oblio that won’t be released to the public. Oblio, by the way, is the solo project of Nicholas Foster, who directed the video. The show gets going at 8:00 pm, and admission is $10.
aka Jarvix, the Chief Executive Weirdo of Make Oklahoma Weirder. His out-of-the-box music coverage has been published by the Oklahoma Gazette, KOSU, and The Oklahoman among others. He also makes DIY music as a solo multi-instrumentalist live looper in his spare time.