The Cinderella story of the year, Elbow caught everybody unawares, themselves included, when their fourth album, The Seldom Seen Kid, secured the Mercury Music Prize last month. Their critical and commercial stock has been high ever since, with the album enjoying a sevenfold sales boost and returning to the Top Ten.

A capacity Portsmouth crowd greeted the Manchester five-piece on Tuesday, although the singer Guy Garvey raised a cheer by noting that most of the evening’s tickets had been sold well before the Mercury victory. Augmented by a quartet of female string players, Elbow played with well-drilled precision and often pleasingly unorthodox arrangements. Opening with a trumpet fanfare, they began the show with the crunchy, percussive clatter of Starlings and The Bones of You.

An unshaven, dishevelled bear of a man with a comically deadpan demeanour, Garvey makes an unlikely rock star. But he possesses a fine crooner’s voice and a novelistic eye for detail. Throughout the evening, the singer used his warm, down-to-earth charm to good effect, exchanging droll banter with the audience before orchestrating a mass singalong of I Do Like to be Beside the Seaside.

Elbow’s default performance style is engaging rather than exciting, more bonhomie than bombast. With a few notable exceptions — chiefly the foot-stomping swamp-blues racket of Grounds for Divorce — this show was a polished and sober affair. Garvey spun his kitchen-sink vignettes while rocking gently back and forth at the microphone, but otherwise both band and audience remained largely rooted to the spot.

This low-key delivery suited nuanced, intimate ballads such as The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver and Weather to Fly, both of which exuded a mournful kind of beauty. But more expansive tracks such as Great Expectations and Station Approach came dangerously close to Snow Patrol levels of twinkly, soft-rock tedium. After nearly two decades, often overlooked and underrated, the Cinderellas of Britrock are clearly most comfortable with bittersweet understatement. This was a good show, but more emotional fireworks might have made it great.

Tour continues: tomorrow, Cardiff University; Sat-Mon, Roundhouse, London NW1

Click here to find tickets for Elbow

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