Marker Starling - Trust an Amateur (2018)

The fourth Marker Starling album, 2018's Trust an Amateur is actually the second one Chris Cummings worked on when he began the project. After starting to write the songs, he took a break to record a 2016 album of covers, I'm Willing, and 2017's Anchors and Ampersands; he then doubled back to finish them and headed to Berlin to record with producer Guy Sternberg. It's a lovely collection of tracks sung by Cummings in his best sleepy croon, as he tells stories of everyday life and love backed by electric piano and a drum machine. It's standard Marker Starling, and that's a good thing. Cummings has a knack for understated melodies that slip past any defenses to nestle deeply in the brain, and his lyrics are as insightful and real as usual. The sparse arrangements have yet to let him down and even when they start to sound a little samey, it's a warmly comforting sameness that still sounds good. The sources for the songs come from a variety of places -- two of the songs date back to 2005 when Cummings was tasked with writing words to go with Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slapstick, one is a collaboration with Cummings' friend Dennis Frey (who passed away in 2002), and the rest were composed in the wee morning hours as his newborn child slept. The songs are a mix of fantasy, musings on birth and death, and slices of everyday living that reveal a universal truth deepened by the low-key ache of the vocals. Some of them are long tracks that have two or more songs melded together, some are shorter ruminations; the whole record is one unbroken spell of calm wonder and hopeful melancholy masterfully woven by Cummings. Trust an Amateur is further proof that Marker Starling is soft rock you can trust, and Cummings is a wizard who's able to conjure up magic with the most basic of materials and break your heart with a calmly sung melody.