Robert Ellis broadens his horizons - again - with latest record

In every recent interview, Robert Ellis has been asked why the title of his fourth album is eponymous. The Texas-based musician admits that it might look like he’s trying to signal a creative rebirth or announce a new musical direction, but he says naming the record after himself wasn’t intended as some kind of statement.

“If you do it four records in, I guess it seems like you’re trying to say something,” Ellis said. “But I definitely don’t think this record is any more of a personal statement than any of the other records. I think at the time they’re released, they all kind of represent me in that moment. It’s a little picture of that one time in your life, and then you make another record.”

But “Robert Ellis” does represent a stylistic departure from the three records that preceded it. The latest collection from the singer-songwriter, who brings his five-piece band to the Bartlett on Thursday, owes more to ’70s soft rock and contemporary indie pop than the country and folk sounds of his debut.

Ellis’ work is defined by a lyrical specificity that sometimes recalls Randy Newman, Harry Nilsson or Paul Simon, whose “Still Crazy After All These Years” was covered on Ellis’ last record, “The Lights from the Chemical Plant.” Many of Ellis’ songs take the form of one-act dramas, and he says he often thinks of himself as a storyteller as much as a songwriter.

And though many of his songs are character sketches, many of them, even the ones written in second and third person, contain trace amounts of autobiography.

“But I find it more interesting when the story surprises me,” Ellis said. “If it happened to me, it’s less likely to be surprising. I will sometimes start from personal experience and try to turn it and make it go in different directions, have it be exciting.”

“Robert Ellis” is a catalog of wayward souls, often dropping us into the middle of its characters’ lives. The album opener, “Perfect Strangers,” peers in on lonely people in bustling public places. “California” is about a woman who threatens to move away after another argument with her boyfriend. “Maybe I’ll fall in love again someday,” she tells him, though that “maybe” suggests she never will.

“Couples Skate” resembles a Bruce Springsteen snapshot of young lovers spending a night at a skating rink; “The High Road” is a somber cowboy ballad in the Marty Robbins vein (“I’m losing the hair on top of my head / I’m losing sight, I’m losing the fight”).

The narrator of the song “Drivin’ ” is perhaps most representative of Ellis’ protagonists: “Where am I gonna go,” he wonders, “when the girl behind the counter at the coffee shop gets tired of me hangin’ ‘round with nothing left to say?”

“Drivin’ ” served as the album’s lead single, and it’s one of the more straight-up country songs on the record.

“That song is pretty rooted in country and bluegrass tradition,” Ellis said, “but I didn’t think twice about it. If I had put that song on ‘Chemical Plant,’ I think I would have been kind of insecure about it being the lead single, or people’s introduction to me being that song. I wouldn’t want them to think that’s all we do.”

Like a person slipping in and out of accents, the country flavor of Ellis’ earlier material still creeps through the album’s lush string arrangements, synth lines and soulful harmonies. And whether Ellis intended it, his self-titled record suggests he’s moving into less classifiable territory.

“I wanted to get to a place where we could ditch, you know, ‘this is music that harkens back to honky-tonk country,’ or whatever,” Ellis said. “I definitely wanted it to feel right now, and not nostalgic, but to also have elements of tradition and influence. … Most of these songs were pop songs in my mind, and it’s a nice idea that a soccer mom could listen to this and not think about any of this stuff we’re talking about and just enjoy it.”