Marker Starling

Marker Starling embodies the singular artistic direction of Toronto keyboardist and vocalist Chris A. Cummings, who crafts relaxed pop informed by soft rock and early-'70s singer/songwriter traditions. The arrangements frequently rely on minimal support from electric piano and an unsteady drum machine, while the lyrics deliver intimate sketches of love, loss, and everyday existence delivered through Cummings's close-miked croon. The resulting recordings constitute austere yet striking bedroom pop, whether highlighting his interpretive gifts on the 2016 release I'm Willing or his original songwriting on 2018's Trust an Amateur.

Following more than ten years recording as Mantler, Cummings launched the Marker Starling Trio in 2012 with bassist Matt McLaren and drummer Jay Anderson. Continuing the exploratory spirit of his earlier work, the project examined a personal variant of jazz-tinged soft rock reminiscent of Steely Dan and Todd Rundgren. By the 2015 appearance of the debut album Rosy Maze on Tin Angel, the lineup had reduced to Cummings alone. He issued I'm Willing the following year, a set of reinterpretations including Classics IV's "Stormy" and Caetano Veloso's "Lost in the Paradise." The album confines itself to piano, drum machine, and occasional guest vocals from Laetitia Sadier. During a prolific 2017 Cummings joined the German group Von Spar for their album Street Life and contributed the song "Deep Background" to Sadier's Finding Me Finding You; Marker Starling also delivered Anchors and Ampersands, a retrospective collection of earlier compositions newly arranged with horns and live drums alongside covers of the Spinners and Sandro Perri.

Trust an Amateur, the subsequent Marker Starling album, drew on archival material—a 1998 collaboration with Dennis Frey, pieces begun in 2005, and songs predating I'm Willing and Anchors and Ampersands—and was tracked in Berlin under producer Guy Sternberg. Returning to the spare aesthetic of I'm Willing, the record appeared on Tin Angel in late 2018. Cummings then traveled to the U.K. to prepare the fifth album, High January, produced by Sean O'Hagen of the High Llamas. The sessions incorporated the live band of bassist Joe Carvell, drummer Euan Rodger, and guitarist Andy Whitehead, yielding a warmer ensemble texture and another vocal contribution from Laetitia Sadier; Tin Angel issued the album in April 2020.