Robert Lee Castleman - Crazy As Me (2000/2019)

Robert Lee Castleman begins and ends his debut album with songs about the tension between settling down and moving on, and he touches upon the subject elsewhere as well. The collection's ten songs follow a rough narrative about a man who has to keep traveling ("Nobody Said That [It Would Be Easy]") but who nevertheless encounters love ("Like Red on a Rose") and despite his sense that he will never find a partner as "Crazy as Me," he begins to wonder if he shouldn't "Stay Here." He quickly discovers, however, that his companion wants to domesticate him ("You Can't Change Me") and determines that he should be "Movin' On." This is all fairly conventional stuff in the country-folk world Castleman inhabits, but he occasionally comes up with a turn of phrase that goes beyond the clichés. Though he sings his own lyrics feelingly, he is possessed of a wheezy tenor that doesn't do full justice to his songs, and the album can be seen as, in effect, a highly polished demo for the country singers who may one day find hits in such songs as "Stay Here" and "I Can't Believe You (Unless You Lie)."