Growing Up — And Staying Grown Up — On Caleb Caudle’s Latest

Caleb Caudle lives well.

Alcohol-free and happily married, this Winston-Salem, North Carolina, country singer seems to be in a very stable place. It wasn’t always this way, it’s worth saying, and his less refined youth definitely educated songs on records like 2016’s Carolina Ghost. On the new Crushed Coins, though, Caudle seems to have left all that behind. It’s a more mature album, all clean lines and well-paced stories, reflective of an artist who grew up — and stayed grown-up.

“I was born with too many miles / in my head, in my heart, in my soul,” Caudle sings on the patient, lightly psychedelic album opener “Lost Without You.” “And I learned after a while / you’ve gotta let it go.” And then he does, moving on throughout the album to write from the perspective of the person he’s become, not the person he used to be. While on Carolina Ghost he seemed aware that he was inevitably “long gone before the party even comes to a close” at the bars where he plays his gigs, he seems to have come to peace with that on Crushed Coins.

Sonically, “Lost Without You” — and Crushed Coins in general — inhabits a warm, enveloping form of country music. There’s pedal steel and twang, sure, but few sharp edges. It’s a comfortable space for Caudle, and for good reason. On the melancholy cuts, the music is almost a consoling hug to accompany the heartbreaking lyrics. On the more driving tunes, these warm textures serve the same purpose they do on the more recent War on Drugs records: There’s scenery within the song, so to speak, and listening on headphones or quality speakers is rewarded. Granted, there’s the occasional exception. “Love That’s Wild” sways and twangs like a ’70s outlaw tune. “I heard all about living the dream / I’m just living within my means / there’s no crown, but you’re the queen / tell ’em about a love that’s wild.”

Indeed, Caudle’s just as prone to nod to recent rockers as to classic country singers. The verse of “Empty Arms,” for instance, features the mid-tempo percussive bombast, effected guitars, and piano accents of a My Morning Jacket tune, while the tragic “Six Feet From the Flowers” nods to “Not Dark Yet,” from Bob Dylan’s masterful Time Out of Mind.

Indeed, these tunes are built of excellent pieces and are written from a measured, mature standpoint — and they almost always work. “Six Feet From the Flowers,” which is written from the perspective of a husband whose wife died young, is almost cruelly sad. “NYC in the Rain,” which presents New York City as a young woman whose social life has turned sour, seems a little too much like a romantic comedy set to music, especially compared with the strengths of the rest of Crushed Coins. And it is a strong record overall, implying a long career to come from an artist with increasingly stable footing.