Marques Toliver isn't your ordinary pop star. Not many violin players are. That Toliver has chosen to construct his ambitious, soaring pop songs around such a classical instrument makes for some gorgeous juxtaposition. Instrumental Repetition gives Toliver a chance to show off his classical training but it's also not a far stretch from that to Stay, with its swelling strings and more classic pop sound or the evocative Magic Look that bases its hooks on first, an insistent beat played out on the violin and then ending on a escalating riff that wraps the song up nicely.
It's no coincidence that Toliver has named one of his songs Repetition. It's a device he uses a lot. Often it has the desired affect of leaving the listener with an echoing remnant of a particular track in their head but just sometimes it exposes moments on the album as insubstantial. This is a debut album so Toliver's songwriting is in its infancy but there's enough here that works to leave the moments that aren't meaty enough to disappoint.
Try Your Best is one of those moments when everything Toliver is attempting comes together almost perfectly. The strings play against one another, sometimes grounded and earthy, at others soaring around the melody while Toliver sings of turning up your radio.
Of course, the irony is radio would never be brave enough to give someone like Toliver airtime, but thankfully in this internet age, he has plenty of other options to find an audience as he certainly deserves one.
