Silversun Pickups frontman Brian Aubert’s guitar cut out at quite possibly the worst time Tuesday night at the Century Center.

He’d been having trouble keeping the instrument in tune for a while — before launching into “Latchkey Kids” in the back half of the set, he told the audience it “started to break” during “Circadian Rhythm (Last Dance)” four songs earlier. He ended up passing the guitar back to his tech right as the band ramped into the song’s chorus.

It’s to the whole band’s credit that the song did not fall apart; Aubert ended up swinging his loose cable in his right hand as the audience cheered him on. When he finally got another guitar in his hands, he let loose with some of the raunchiest, meanest playing of the evening.

That is the sign of professionals, a band that’s clearly in it for the long haul. Given the way the group was initially pegged as a cheap SoCal imitation of the Smashing Pumpkins when its first album “Carnavas” dropped in 2006, perhaps this longevity is surprising. If you’ve been paying attention, it makes perfect sense.

Four albums in (“Better Nature” arrived late last year, and was heavily focused on this night), Silversun Pickups are hitting their stride as a powerful live act with nothing to prove. The quartet rocked the packed parking lot for an hour and a half, bringing its new material to life while throwing in some old favorites for good measure.

The variety, especially in tones, was perhaps the best part of the show, despite a rocky start in which keyboardist Joe Lester could barely be heard (this venue seems to baffle folks trying to adjust the sound, and it makes sense — it’s a parking lot). He didn’t really come up to where he should have been until about three songs in, but fortunately two of those (the hard-rocking “Well Thought Out Twinkles” and “The Royal We”) were driven more by Aubert’s fuzzed out guitar anyway.

Once he did come up, on the atmospheric “Nightlight,” all the band’s moving components finally clicked into place. The next song, “Better Nature” single “Circadian Rhythm (Last Dance),” was a stunning exercise in soundscape creation, and perhaps the best thing the band played all evening (and with bassist Nikki Monninger on vocals, another welcome variation in the sound).

Further highlights included the driving riffs of “Substitution” (a nice showcase for drummer/ball of flying hair Chris Guanlao) and the eerily pretty “Friendly Fires.” The final build before the encore — “Panic Switch” into “Ragamuffin” into “Lazy Eye,” with a short snippet of “Growing Old is Getting Old” — whipped the crowd into a frenzy (and rendered most of the three-song encore superfluous).

A pause here for some old-man, get-off-my-lawn lecturing: Why go to a show if you’re just planning to get drunk or high (or both) and talk through the whole thing? Can you even hear each other talk? Really, just stay home and do that. (Or just get it all out of your system with first opening band Kiev.)

Second-billed British popsters A Silent Film, however, brought the goods. Highlights such as “Paralyzed” and “Something to Believe In” showcased an energetic, ’80s-esque, U2-meets-Psychedelic Furs vibe that was infectious, and provided a nice build-up to the main event.