"I'm in love again," Howie Day sang as he opened his concert at Irving Plaza. "Brace yourself now." Actually, he should be bracing himself, since in most of his songs he is the one who ends up lonely and pining for lost love.

Mr. Day is a folk-rock stalwart in the ranks of the tuneful, moderately depressed nice guys who have gathered college, club and Internet audiences on the way to the pop mainstream. He's less jazzy than John Mayer, less reggae-tinged than Jack Johnson and more openly dramatic than either one. When he gets worked up and the band kicks in behind him, as it does regularly, his voice reaches for the ardent high notes of Bono in U2. On Thursday night Mr. Day's audience was full of young women who sounded eager to comfort a songwriter with tousled hair and a diffident half smile.

On his new album, "Stop All the World Now" (Epic), Mr. Day's songs were full of confessions, apologies and second thoughts, and all could turn into self-deprecating invitations. "Even the best fall down sometimes," he sang in "Collide," with his voice jumping up to his most vulnerable falsetto for the word down. Climbing from quiet strumming to choruses that aimed to be anthems, the songs were by turns languid and hearty, but too predictable.

Midway through his set and for his first encores, Mr. Day performed without his band, using his guitar and an echo device. He tapped drumbeats on the guitar body, plucked bass notes and meshed low and high chords, making his lone guitar simulate the band sound of U2 as he sang, "I just want to taste your love." During the encores he echoed his voice into a full backup chorus. It was easy to imagine him back in his room after his latest rejection, alone with only his guitar and his gizmo.

Charlotte Martin played a short opening set, alone at an electric piano. She is obviously a disciple of Tori Amos, from the semiclassical piano chords to the mercurial vocals that start out sweet and rush into big crescendos; she grabbed the attention of an audience that wasn't familiar with her. Ms. Martin is not as cryptic or musically eccentric as Ms. Amos, and thus more immediately accessible. She writes straightforward pop songs about love affairs and post-adolescent identity crises. In a bouncy mock-vaudeville song about the urge to stalk an ex, she came up with a winning chorus: "I'm normal. Please date me."