You’ve gotta love a guy whose opening lyrics go like this: “I’m fucking crazy/ You know that it’s true/ You knew it when you met me/ Don’t act like this is new.” Robert Ellis sings those words plaintively, not in the drawl one might expect from a Texas troubadour, while riffing along simply on piano, all of it leading up to the inevitable yet so satisfying denouement: “And I’m fucking crazy about you.” Ellis’ new songs, like those that came before, are often highly visual in that way, and while they’re not all as deliberately provocative, none of them exit without leaving an impression. On “Aren’t We Supposed to Be in Love,” the blaming part of a troubled relationship is split down the middle, with the fear of the unavoidable taking precedence over the cause: “Tell me I’m not gonna lose you/ Seems like a matter of time,” Ellis sings, and there’s just enough of a crack in his voice to make you feel for both of them. It’s not all about the tensions and tenuousness of love though: “Nobody Smokes Anymore” may or may not be tongue-in-cheek, or simply observational (“It’s such a drag,” get it?), and you can draw your own conclusions when he determines therein that “Nobody has fun anymore.” Ellis may at one time have seemed like just another wannabe neo-country dude, but Texas Piano Man is nothing less than a considered redefinition; he’s clearly dared himself to stake out his own place, and thus far succeeded.