Breaking up, breaking out

Judging by Nicole Atkins’s recently released sophomore album, “Mondo Amore,’’ the answer is yes.

The New Jersey singer-songwriter didn’t realize she was cleaning her slate — breaking ties with her longtime boyfriend, her former record label Columbia, and her band in quick succession — until she’d done it.

“For six months, I was still writing and playing shows, but I was dark as hell. I didn’t even want to be around myself,’’ says a now much more cheerful Atkins with a laugh over the phone, as she rolls from Portland, Ore., to Vancouver, Canada, on a tour that brings her to Brighton Music Hall tomorrow. “Finally a good friend of mine said, ‘You need to move back to New York. Your town is way too small, and if you feel successful you will be successful.’ So he hooked me up with my security deposit to move back to Brooklyn and that’s when I was like, ‘Wow, I’m back here and I’ve got nothing, and now I’m going to make something out of it.’ ’’

And she did.

“Mondo Amore,’’ the follow-up to her critically acclaimed 2007 debut, “Neptune City,’’ is the sound of someone figuring herself out, one song at a time. With help from the healing powers of pop music of all stripes and a huge voice — pitched somewhere between the high drama of Roy Orbison and the disarming plainspokenness of Loretta Lynn — Atkins burrowed into her predicaments. From the foreboding, noir-like grooves of “Vultures,’’ to the soulful amble of the cheater’s lament “Cry Cry Cry,’’ to the devastating ballad “War Is Hell,’’ featuring Jim James of My Morning Jacket, Atkins leaves it all on tape.

If her albums were a family, the wider-screen scope of sound and emotion of “Mondo Amore’’ would serve as a big sister to “Neptune City,’’ with “Cry Cry Cry’’ working as a bridge between the two.

“This is your gateway drug back into me,’’ says Atkins with a chuckle of the song, co-written with former Cotton Mather frontman Robert Harrison.

“This was when I was on Columbia and they were like, ‘We need you to write an up-tempo single,’ ’’ says Atkins, who was at a loss as to how to do that. “We started riffing and came up with ‘Cry Cry Cry.’ [‘Neptune City’ ’s lead track] ‘Maybe Tonight’ was from the same family, the classic kind of Brill Building-type pop. But I felt ‘Maybe Tonight’ was very naive and hopeful, where ‘Cry Cry Cry’ sounds very mature and womanly and commanding.’’

That boldness surfaces throughout the album, most prominently on “My Baby Don’t Lie,’’ which juxtaposes an old-timey country pop sound with a very modern and colorfully direct lyric about what she would do when confronting the “other woman.’’ “I tend to write my lyrics kind of poetic and cryptic, but the way I talk in real life is just like a Jersey pop-off, like ‘Yo, that [expletive] is gonna die,’ ’’ she says with a laugh.

Although the songs stem from breakups, Atkins isn’t only interested in playing the victim. “I don’t feel like any of it’s accusatory, like ‘You did this to me! You did this to me!’ It’s like, ‘You did this to me, and I did this to you.’ It’s both sides. ‘War Is Hell’ is about the worst fight I’ve ever had in my life, so I just felt like it was very two-sided and I wanted a guy’s voice on it,’’ she says of enlisting good friend James’s vocal support.

Distanced from those painful but ultimately inspirational times Atkins looks at the songs a little differently now. “I feel like they’re a little bit more for everybody else rather than just for me,’’ says the 32-year-old. “I feel more like a spectator. Although when I get onstage every night I get to play the role. It’s like being an actor and it’s really fun: ‘Let’s get tragic!’ ’’

She is also grateful for what she went through. “I got a (terrific) album and a new band,’’ says Atkins. “I thought about that the other day. I was in my living room and we were getting ready for the album release and the tour, and my friend Rhett Miller [of the Old 97’s] was in town, and he wanted me to sing a duet with him. So I’m sitting there learning his song and getting everything for my show ready, and then realized I had a date with a new guy that’s awesome. And I looked at my roommate and I was just like, ‘A year ago, I could never imagine that my life would be this cool again.’ I just felt really appreciative. I think sometimes you really have to lose everything to really appreciate what you have.’’

Sarah Rodman can be reached at srodman@globe.com.