Day’s electronic tricks obscure natural gifts

During a mid-set solo acoustic segment at the Roxy on Monday, Howie Day stopped playing his guitar and stepped back from the microphone, but the music kept playing and his voice kept going, thanks to the digital gadgets with which he layered instrumental and vocal tracks to simulate a full band arrangement. The young singer-songwriter, high on the music business’ list of “next John Mayers,” gave a quick “how-’bout-that” lift of the eyebrows and took a sip from a cup -- the old ventriloquist trick.

Of course, his expression may have just been relief that he was here and his equipment was working after an arduous journey to Los Angeles. Fire-related flight cancellations caused the planned Sunday show in his two-night Roxy engagement to be postponed to Tuesday.

Regardless, the electronic trickery proved to be Day’s most memorable asset, and his most annoying and over-relied on, along with the overused echo on his voice. It all obscures such natural gifts as powerful pipes that reach at times toward Bono-ville and a feel for a soaring melody, most notably Monday in the current single “Perfect Time of Day” and the piano-based ballad “End of Our Days.”

It’s also superfluous given that with the release of his first major-label album, “Stop All the World Now,” he’s now touring with a band rather than as a one-man show, as he did when emerging from Maine and spurring a big-label bidding war last year before signing with Epic Records.

In fairness, the track looping, done both in his two unaccompanied numbers and in a few featuring his three-man backing ensemble, is highly crowd-pleasing. But you had to wonder what would be left if his toy were taken away.