Smashing Pumpkins Get Back to Basics

As many Smashing Pumpkins fans had hoped when word spread that original drummer Jimmy Chamberlin was back in the group, the quartet flat-out rocked during a rare club appearance at the Roxy on Saturday.

Playing a lot of new material, along with older tunes, the Pumpkins abandoned the lavishly eccentric flourishes that have preoccupied singer-songwriter Billy Corgan on such albums as last year’s “Adore,” instead reviving the doomy crunch of earlier works.

Following an appropriately hard-rocking, melodic half-hour set by local quartet Queens of the Stone Age, the Pumpkins took the stage and were momentarily drowned out by the cheers of lucky fans who bought, begged or won tickets to see the arena-rockers’ up-close-and-personal date.

Dressed in black, their faces glowing freakishly red and purple under the stage lights, the players stayed in a mostly muscular, hard-driving mode throughout the 90-minute set. Corgan thanked the crowd for listening to the new songs and coyly introduced “our new drummer,” Chamberlin, who had been fired in 1996 after an arrest for heroin possession following the overdose death of keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin while the group was on tour.

With Chamberlin, the band coalesced in ways it hadn’t quite managed with a variety of talented replacements. Driven as Corgan is to connect with his audience, despite creative moves that have sometimes puzzled fans, he was energized in the close quarters, relishing his thunderous interplay with guitarist James Iha and injecting invigorating fury into revved-up takes on such older songs as “Today.” At once intimate and larger-than-life, the show proved a satisfying reward for the faithful, while shining a hopeful beacon on things to come.