Roky Erickson at sold-out Johnny Brenda's

These days, the undead look as if they spent more time at the gym than in the depths of hell, but when Roky Erickson sings about demons, it sounds as if he's been there and back. It's not far from the truth. Erickson, with his band the 13th Floor Elevators, was a pioneer of psychedelic garage rock in the 1960s, mixing the primal stomp of the blues with the unplaceable sound of an instrument called an electric jug and a fierce shriek of a voice sharp enough to penetrate the reverb in which it was often swaddled.

Psychedelic drugs, however, aggravated what was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenia, for which he received electroshock therapy that added further trauma but brought him no closer to a cure. Only in the last several years has Erickson, with the help of his brother and his medication, been able to get back on track, playing music for audiences who have been waiting decades to see him.

At Erickson's sold-out show at Johnny Brenda's, his voice had lost none of its power to shock and disturb. "Creature With the Atom Brain" and "Bloody Hammer" were transformed from B-movie camp to genuinely frightening accounts of brushes with evil. Erickson didn't even need words to get his point across. The only lyric in "I Walked With a Zombie" is the title itself, but Erickson's howl filled in the details without his needing to speak them.

Erickson and his trio mostly stuck to his back catalog, playing only a handful of songs from his last album, True Love Cast Out All Evil, but that was just as well. The comparison between his motley onstage crew and the finely calculated playing of Okkervil River, who served as his band on the recording, only made the limitations of his current ensemble stand out more. At worst, they felt sluggish and flat-footed, but the further back in time Erickson went, the more secure was their grasp on the material. By the time they got to "Two-Headed Dog," they were finally keeping pace, although, given the places he's been, they might have done best to stay a step or two behind.