Love’s back on the rollercoaster

So you were expecting a proper, packaged promotion of her new album when Courtney Love played a post-midnight show at the Roxy on Friday? From rock’s queen of chaos?

Love appears to be campaigning hard for “America’s Sweetheart,” her first album in six years and her first without her old band Hole, but that obviously doesn’t mean she’s become a good girl willing to jump through the record industry’s hoops.

Taking the Roxy stage at 1 a.m., Love led her new band through an erratic hour of ragged-sounding music, nervous chatter and rambling conversation, her raging self-obsession unchecked by any requirements of conventional product-pushing.

There also were some transfixing reminders why Love can command such loyalty from her fans, but overall, the set seemed like an exercise in shaking off the dust after her long absence from the stage, neither classic meltdown nor transfiguring return.

A more compliant performer would have focused on capturing the virtues of her new music -- in the case of “America’s Sweetheart,” the spirited defiance carried by her blunt, confessional lyrics and a rock sound rooted in classic glam, punk and power-pop.

But that sound was an afterthought at the Roxy, as her three-woman band flattened the album’s flavorful features into a dull, distorted roar. Love read lyrics and chords from written pages as she played, stopped and restarted a couple of songs, and generally played to her reputation as the ever-on-the-edge rock goddess.

And then a couple of times she suddenly locked into something, as if snapped into a trance. Love closed the set with Hole’s “Malibu,” ending it by grafting on a refrain from the new “Sunset Strip,” a rolling litany of the reasons “I got pills,” e.g., “ ‘cause I’m suicidal all the time.” In a moment such as that, she was as compelling a figure as you’ll find in pop music.

It’s rare these days to get something raw, real, impulsive and unpredictable from the rock stage. The trick for Love is to keep that coming while still giving her music its due. After all her struggles to be taken seriously, the last thing her music needs is a lack of respect from its creator.