Kevin Bronson on June 30th, 2014

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“I need me some ‘chick-rock,'” a prominent local tastemaker confessed in the edges of the sold-out Roxy Theatre on Friday night, and as terribly un-PC as that appellation sounds in 2014, she was not alone in the throng of giddy fans who showed up in support of Veruca Salt’s reunion.

But “mom-rock” might have been more accurate, and not in the pejorative sense. Nina Gordon and Louise Post, each fortysomething mothers now, joined bassist Steve Lack (nice Muffs T-shirt) and drummer Jim Shapiro in an original-lineup show that captured the Chicago-bred quartet’s original vitality.

• ||| Photos by David Benjamin

Veruca Salt sizzled for 90 minutes in the sweltering room, eliciting wide smiles and wild cheers from a crowd that – when they were not busy wondering whether the Roxy could afford air conditioning – witnessed the latest in a line of 1990s alt-rock favorites to receive a warm welcome-back just in time for everybody’s 20-year college reunion.

“It’s a miracle we’re here,” Post told the crowd, and then as if to pop everyone’s nostalgia bubble pointed out that the quartet has made a new album. Two of Veruca Salt’s new songs, “The Museum of Broken Relationships” and “It’s Holy” (both of which emerged in April on a Record Store Day 10-inch), fit seamlessly into their catalog.

Whether rocking new songs or old, Veruca Salt sounded as crunchy-sweet as in their mid-’90s heyday, when “Seether” made them a radio staple and, it seemed at the time, posited the foursome as a nicer, Midwestern answer to L7. The band had a good three-year run, following up their gold-record debut “American Thighs” with the pop-metal album “Eight Arms to Hold You” before the band split up in 1998.

Resentment ensued when Post went on to form a new Veruca Salt lineup and release more music under the name. But with hatchets buried, fences mended and riffs re-learned, Gordon and Post were all smiles Friday night.

Early on, they followed the minor classic “All Hail Me” with the new “It’s Holy,” and delivered “Spiderman 79” and “With David Bowie” back-to-back midway through the main set. “Seether” was neatly tucked near the end, just before “Shimmer Like a Girl” (off a now-out-of print 1996 EP) and “25,” off the first album.

Two encores followed, sprinkling favorites from the first and second albums (“Volcano Girls,”  “Victrola” and “Benjamin” among them) with the B-side “Pale Green.” Then came the big, sweaty embraces – not the hugs of merely having survived, mind you, but the ones of having conquered.

Somehow, it was appropriate that indie-rockers the Echo Friendly opened – almost all of their prickly songs deal with thorny relationships, although none were particularly memorable.