Between 2004 and 2006 Tody Castillo lost a brother, released an album, got married and had a child. It figures, then, that his new album Windhorse is complex, contemplative, daring and gripping. To hear Castillo tell it, he grew up overnight. The album, likewise, makes good on the promise he showed with his self-titled debut album four years ago.

Tody Castillo

The songs touch on Castillo’s new life, but Windhorse is hardly the baby album.

“A buddy and I were asking each other if you stopped writing good music after you had kids,” Castillo says, laughing. With the birth of a son earlier this year, his brood is up to two. “I didn’t necessarily write these songs about him. ‘Look at him climb the fence, my heart’s about to break.’ It hasn’t taken me there yet. I feel that way, of course, I’m a mushy pile for my kids. But more than writing about him, he put me in a role where I’m taking this whole business more seriously.

“I was just talking about this with my wife. I’m 35 now, and recently it feels like my life is flashing by before my eyes. Maybe it’s called growing up.”

His brother’s death seems to have sped up that growth. “I feel like I got out of my 20s alive and he didn’t,” Castillo says.

He talks of their differences: They “fought like crazy”; Castillo’s brother lived in the mountains in New Mexico, worked as a carpenter and rode horses. Castillo lived in Corpus Christi and San Antonio before attending the University of Houston-Downtown, later moving to New York and writing songs. He moved back to Houston in 2001, where he was based until March, when he moved to Austin.

The two brothers would talk, but not as often as Castillo thinks they should have.

“He’d say, ‘What are you doing in that shithole?’ And I’d say, ‘What are you doing in the middle of nowhere?’”

Shape of My Heart, one of the new songs, addresses frustration at the way rickety and tentative plans to get together usually fall through (“I’ll plan a visit . . .”).

“That thing that hurt most was that we didn’t get to get back together as adults, as smarter humans,” Castillo says. “But I guess everybody goes through that at some point.”

The album’s delay wasn’t due to its personal nature so much as Castillo’s being caught up in other work and family. He says the songs were done long ago, but he could only find time to record on occasional weekends. Despite the deep subject matter, Windhorse is full of memorable melodies rather than soft, somber arrangements. It’s informed by death, for sure, but it remains celebratory of life, a singer-songwriter album with a strong pulse and some nicely layered instrumentation.

Castillo is already thinking ahead to the next one, which he suggests won’t take four years.

“My talent lies in writing so I might as well pick up the pace,” he says. “We want to get behind this one a little bit. But I think I have enough tunes now, I’m ready for a rocker.”

TODY CASTILLO
With band
When: 3 p.m. Saturday
Where: Cactus Music, 2110 Portsmouth
FREE

With John Egan
When: 9 p.m. Oct. 17
Where: Listening Room at Nia Moves Studio, 508 Pecore
Tickets: $8; www.listeningroomhouston.com