Dave Matthews Sings to the Next Generation on ‘Come Tomorrow’

For Dave Matthews, “dad rock” isn’t a put-down. “Come Tomorrow,” the ninth studio album by the Dave Matthews Band and its first since 2012, earnestly embraces fatherhood, commitment, lifelong romance and hope for the next generations.

The album starts with a song welcoming a new child, “Samurai Cop (Oh Joy Begin),” carried by pealing guitars that echo the reverent gravity of U2. (Like U2, the band is including a copy of the new album with concert tickets, a strategy that will boost its chart rankings.) And the album ends with “When I’m Weary,” an orchestral hymn that acknowledges “dark dark days” but vows, “You remind me to keep on trying.” A gloomy streak runs through Matthews’ back catalog, yet willed optimism fills the songs on “Come Tomorrow,” while cynicism and irony are nowhere within earshot.

From end to end, it’s an album of love songs: love progressing through childhood crushes, adult lusts, parental nurturing and benedictions for unknown descendants. The title song on “Come Tomorrow,” a crisp march reinforced by a string section, starts with an old man bemoaning the state of the world even as a “little kid” starts figuring out how to save it. “All the girls and boys will sing/Come tomorrow we fix everything,” goes a chorus.

The music provides convolutions. Folk-pop, funk, metal, jazz, math-rock and pop from South Africa (where Matthews was born) all show up in the 14 tracks on “Come Tomorrow.” The band can converge on a riff or fan out in intricate counterpoint, and its agility makes odd, shifting meters and Matthews’ leaping vocal lines — baritone below, uncharted above — sound natural. The interplay of the core band — particularly Matthews’ acoustic guitar picking, Stefan Lessard’s springy bass lines and Carter Beauford’s pinpoint drumming — easily opens out to arena scale on the album, as electric guitars chime in and string and horn arrangements swell.

A six-year gap between studio albums hasn’t tempted the Dave Matthews Band to try to update (or obviously computerize) its sound. The instruments are still hand-played, and the grooves still sound like they were created through jamming, not programming. “That Girl Is You” unfolds from introduction to obsession over a four-chord syncopated guitar riff, with Matthews playing nearly every part in the studio, yet there’s an improvisational volatility to his voice — breathy and cagey, then rounded and courteous, then agitated and scratchy, then shrieking in wild-eyed falsetto. It works; he gets the girl.

The album was recorded gradually, in multiple studios with multiple producers. Two songs that have long been evolving in the band’s live sets, “Can’t Stop” and “Idea of You,” include alto saxophone from LeRoi Moore, a founding band member who died in 2008. “Idea of You” — a jammy song about a childhood crush lingering to become an adult romance — is also the only track on the album with violinist Boyd Tinsley, who left the band in February after two decades, citing health reasons; he later faced allegations of sexual harassment. (Tinsley has denied what he called “false accusations.”)

One of Matthews’ strengths has been his lyrics’ passionate respect for women; it’s a major reason his concert audiences are far more gender mixed than most jam-band crowds. The women in his songs are compelling, beautiful, mystical and carnal all at once. “Come On Come On” — two stately, undulating chords fortified by a string section and addressed to a “beautiful, beautiful girl” — declares, “I just wanna make you” in a “great great love” but comes across as worshipful, not pushy. In “Again and Again,” modal riffing and a limber six-beat pulse drive promises of devotion and satisfaction: “I see everything in you tonight,” Matthews sings.

“Do You Remember” echoes Shangaan pop from South Africa — thumb-popping bass, hopping vocal lines, stuttering guitars and horns — while the lyrics sketch a romance that began young, with children’s games, and grew up to “making love in the back seat.” Matthews also contemplates childhood joys — “We will rope swing and river swim” — in “Virginia in the Rain,” a jam-like six-minute song with Tim Reynolds deploying multiple electric guitars in a thoughtful dialogue and Matthews crooning, “Don’t grow up too fast.”

The realization that life is cyclical is a long view, a fatherly view. Matthews has decided he’s not going to be the grumpy old man he sings about in “Come Tomorrow,” but he doesn’t sugarcoat things either; each song notes the fears and sorrows it’s determined to overcome. The music does that, with consolation in its melodies and a life force in its rhythms.

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Dave Matthews Band

“Come Tomorrow”