From a stormy time springs a "Beautiful Day"

“I think it was during the second session in the middle of the second day of recording that we actually decided we were going to get a divorce rather than try to keep the marriage going, so that’s about as fresh as it gets,’’ Robison says from his San Antonio home.

As is often the case, the worst times provided some of the best inspiration, as the 44-year-old Texas native found himself discarding tunes he had written only a month before that felt like they belonged to another life.

“I just sat down one night and thought, ‘I’m going to try to write exactly what happened today, exactly how I’m feeling,’ and then it was just like, man, I couldn’t keep up with myself,’’ says Robison, who lays some of the blame for his marriage falling apart on the pressure that descended on the Dixie Chicks during the George Bush controversy.

Akin to terrific predecessors like Willie Nelson’s “Phases and Stages’’ and Tom Petty’s “Echo,’’ “Beautiful Day’’ delves into the tornado of emotions - anger, melancholy, regret - that swirl around the core of all romantic splits. The songs also reflect the civility of Robison’s divorce.

“I wanted to keep all the overt vindictiveness out of it,’’ Robison says of his first album in five years. “Emily and I are still very close. She comes over to the house for dinner three times a week with [our three] kids, and we still go out and have dinner with our friends. I didn’t want my kids for the next 20 years of their life at their therapists’ office saying, ‘Daddy keeps calling Mommy a bitch on his records.’ That would get kind of old after a while.’’

But that doesn’t mean Robison doesn’t land a few jabs. From the incongruously sunny title track - in which the woman cruises contentedly away from her previous life - to the Petty-esque protest of “She’s So Fine’’ - in which the man defiantly moves on - the singer-songwriter expresses himself clearly in what is easily his best work yet.

When asked if the split was so amicable that his ex-wife, who’s a gifted multi-instrumentalist, offered to play on the record, he chuckles and says, “No, there wasn’t any of that.’’ But she did know what Robison was up to.

“As soon as I’d get a rough track, I would give it to her,’’ he says. “ ‘Yellow Blues’ was one of the first songs I recorded and she was like, ‘I get 90 percent of the lyrics, but there are some that you might want to explain to me.’ And I was like, ‘Nope, you really don’t want to know.’ ’’

Robison has been encouraged that many early listeners have embraced “Beautiful Day,’’ and although it feels incredibly specific to him, he knows “this is definitely not something that just happens to me, so I think that I just want people to listen to it and think, ‘Man, have I been there.’ ’’

He also tried to make explicit the undercurrent of optimism that springs when you wake up one day and realize that you’re closer to healing than to heartache.

“I definitely wanted it to be emotionally honest,’’ he says, “but the overview of the whole record was very overtly redemptive and not like ‘just [expletive] give up.’ Things do get better and they have.’’

Robison plans to tour this fall and understands the perversity of the possibility that his divorce will garner more mainstream exposure for what has been mainly a cult-level career thus far. But he’s trying to just accept it as a blessing. And he’s already arrived at a place where he can laugh at the idea of a missed marketing opportunity for his former wife to have released a companion record from her point of view: “We could’ve had warring divorce records!’’

Robison also understands that with “Beautiful Day’’ he may be setting himself an impossible bar to clear next time since he likely won’t have a divorce to use for source material.

“God, I hope not,’’ he says with a laugh. “What’s totally sick is my favorite writers, it seems like they would actually do that, so I haven’t ruled that out completely yet. If I’m hitting a dry spot, I might have to go to Vegas.’’

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