Underground

On a recent Thursday evening, on the Red Line platform at Park Street station, a sizable crowd of people slowed their pace, paused their iPods, and congregated in front of Lily Holbrook, a petite woman with auburn hair and a friendly face. They were lured by her intimately sparse folk rendition of the Cure's "Just Like Heaven." Some of the group ignored the Alewife- and Quincy-bound trains that came roaring through, opting to listen and wait for the next ones. As Holbrook switched to Ozzy Osbourne's "Mama, I'm Coming Home," then an original song, "Running Into Walls," two girls clad in sweatpants and sneakers watched from across the tracks, then crossed over for a closer view. Passersby shouted that Holbrook should be on "American Idol," or that she sounded like folk-turned-pop star Jewel -- which she does, with an added seen-it-all, weather-worn edge. Most people donated money, several bought CDs, and a few tossed handfuls of coins across the tracks.

"Yeah, that happens a lot," says Holbrook, 29, between songs. "I kind of wish it would stop." Still, she hasn't suffered injuries from any errant coins yet, and she's always grateful for a donation. She says "thank you" each time a lingering commuter adds to her lunchbox of funds, which sits neatly inside her sticker-plastered guitar case, even if she's mid - lyric.

Holbrook is a much-buzzed-about fixture among Boston's T-side musicians, but she has yet to gain national attention, despite some close calls. She's recorded two albums, "Running From the Sky" (self-released) and "Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt" (Back Porch Records), starred in a documentary about street performers called "Playing for Change," and performed in clubs locally with the first lady of street singers, Mary Lou Lord. Her hook is her voice; her music is reminiscent of Jenny Lewis covering "Exile in Guyville"-era Liz Phair, vaguely childlike but with a darker, more cynical side. Many of her songs are laced with themes of loss and punctuated by mythical imagery, but that comes out mostly on her albums and at clubs. She limits her subway set lists to covers and family-friendly tunes.

Holbrook, an Abington native, has been busking full-time since she graduated from Emerson College in 1999. For six years after college, she performed in Santa Monica, Calif., on the famed Third Street Promenade; last fall she returned to Boston to be closer to her family. That led her back to the Park Street and Harvard Square T stations -- where Holbrook first performed publicly, at age 18.

"I knew I loved music, but I didn't necessarily have any confidence to think I could actually make a living with it," says Holbrook, recalling her teen years over tea and crepes at Z Square, in Harvard Square. "I actually auditioned for a national production of 'Les Miserables,' and I did really well. I thought, 'I guess I should pursue that.' But then I realized, I'm not that kind of happy." Holbrook didn't grow up with starry-eyed dreams of becoming the next big star. Her looks and her theatrical vocals make her the perfect candidate for either the stage or the pop music charts, but she's not interested in playing a character or singing about her latest love woes. Instead, her music is both a means for dealing with tragedy and an outlet for her opinions.

When Holbrook was 16, her brother Christopher, who had introduced her to the joys of metal and grunge music, passed away tragically and mysteriously at the age of 24. Authorities were unable to identify the cause of his death, according to Holbrook. After losing the brother she had always admired, when she first picked up a guitar, as a college freshman, she had a catharsis of sorts. Out came all of her feelings of grief and loss, in the form of heartbreakingly honest songs. Many of these ended up on Holbrook's first album, "Running From the Sky."

"You withered away / Through doors of other times / Your peace was a soldier / Your spirit was colder," Holbrook sings on "The Snow," over acoustic guitar and flute. Later, on "Spaceship," she sings, "And now you're far, far from the earth / Above the rock and soil / Far, far from the earth / where blood no longer boils," to the accompaniment of moaning strings. As a whole, the album is a sparse, at times haunting, portrait of loss, with references to myths and fairy tales, a hallmark of hers .

"I've always been in love with mythology and the King Arthur period," she says. "My brothers were into Dungeons and Dragons, and I used to steal their manuals and memorize them." The theme continues, though less apparently, on Holbrook's 2005 release, "Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt." On "Running Into Walls," Holbrook relates the tale of Humpty Dumpty to the lonely aimlessness many recent college graduates experience, when life feels as though it "crumbles and tumbles and stumbles down."

Holbrook's second album is an exhibit of both her musical and personal growth while living in California, with feminist themes that leak through on tracks about three-inch heels, plastic surgery, and one-night stands.

"I always had a strong feminist side," she says. "I'm not a man hater or anything like that. I'm just concerned about women obsessed with what they look like, or don't look like, or want to look like. It's something that I see in every woman that I know, in a powerful way, even if it's not obvious."

Holbrook is a skilled songwriter, but the album's overproduced effects often overshadow her sweetly sarcastic voice and inventive lyrics. On "Make Them Wonder," she howls about image-obsessed men, in a stream of lyrics not suitable for print, and then asks "Who are they to call me obscene?" It's a powerful song, but her point gets lost in the whistles and layers of harmonizing vocals.

Holbrook's true talent as a vocalist and a songwriter were more starkly obvious on a cold Tuesday evening last month, when she played for a packed crowd at Sky Bar in Somerville, without the roar of trains or album effects behind her. In a ruffled crimson top, black skirt, and black fishnet stockings, with a black silk flower behind her ear, Holbrook resembled a 1940s jazz singer. The crowd was reverently quiet as she sang, frowning and squinting downward, as though getting out the songs was a physically demanding process. On the subway she's a captivating voice, on her albums a girl with a point, but onstage she's the whole package.

Of course, that's not the only reason for Holbrook to play at clubs in addition to T stations. Midway through her set, she requested more volume on the microphone.

"I'm going deaf," she said. "You try singing over trains all the time -- it's hard."