POP MUSIC REVIEWS : A Less-Clamorous Jesus and Mary Chain

Scottish brothers Jim and William Reid of the Jesus and Mary Chain began their career a decade ago, burying delicate melodies under countless strata of distorted guitar. They’re a few links further along their fraternal chain these days and are now content to let their languorous, lovelorn pop tunes jangle without any noisy embellishment.

On Saturday at the Hollywood Palladium, it was this less-clamorous Jesus and Mary Chain that put songs ahead of sonics and grooved its way through a tunefully solid set drawn mostly from its new album, “Stoned & Dethroned.”

The touring quintet brought a harder, head-on, rock ‘n’ roll edge to new tunes such as “Save Me” and “Come On,” but never approached the industrial-strength feedback of its concerts past. The group did occasionally reach back to pump up the shuffling techno-beats of older material and gave spirited performances of earlier hits such as “Sidewalking” and the incendiary “Reverence.”

The stage lights, smoke machines and projected film images worked harder to hold the crowd’s attention than the inert band did, but the tense mix of sugary melodies, Jim Reid’s sourball vocals and William Reid’s austere guitar parts made for some consistently gripping music.

Mazzy Star opened with a short set of dreamy, drifting laments that included the group’s currently reborn hit “Fade Into You,” from its 1993 album “So Tonight That I Might See.” Eminently serene vocalist Hope Sandoval returned at evening’s end to join the Jesus and Mary Chain in an encore rendition of its current hit “Sometimes Always.”

* The Jesus and Mary Chain and Mazzy Star play tonight at Montezuma Hall, San Diego State University, 8 p.m. $20. (619) 594-6947 .