In training for their Led Zeppelin support slot in London next month, Foreigner played to a sedate, mostly middle-aged crowd in Cardiff. These soft-rock veterans are in the middle of their first British tour in five years, ostensibly to mark their 30th anniversary, although they have been largely dormant for more than a decade. Only Mick Jones, their 62-year-old lead guitarist and main songwriter, remains from the original founding members.

Jones, born in Britain but resident in the US for decades, has worked with dozens of famous names; he is also the stepfather of Mark Ronson, the hip young producer behind Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse. In Cardiff, he introduced the latest in an ever-changing Foreigner lineup, including the drummer Jason Bonham, son of Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham. Besides playing with Jones, he will sit in for his late father at the London mega-show on December 10. Although the polished power ballads from Foreigner’s mid-1980s commercial peak now belong in the pantheon of knowingly naff karaoke classics, there was no hint of postmodern irony about their stodgy, old-fashioned set.

There were plenty of Spinal Tap moments, but none felt intentional. Most came courtesy of the band’s latest lead singer, Kelly Hansen, a stick-thin screecher given to theatrical, third-hand, rock-god poses. The show was an uneven affair, slow to warm up and overstuffed with blustery blues-rock. Hansen dedicated Dirty White Boys to “all the naughty girls” in the venue, sounding as permissive as a provincial vicar. Thankfully the crafted keyboard ballads, a Foreigner forte, have aged more gracefully. The stabbing piano motif of Cold as Ice still gets pulses racing, and the melancholy glide of Waiting for a Girl Like You added a welcome note of icy grandeur to an evening of guitar-heavy histrionics. Jones inevitably saved his biggest hit, the mighty I Want to Know what Love Is, for the encore. Local school choirs are being recruited throughout this tour to supply the song’s rousing, gospel-infused chorus refrain. But in Wales, these duties fell to the Cardiff Arms Park Male Choir. These dapper old boyos should have stolen the show, but their voices were drowned out by the band. A noble experiment thus ended up feeling gimmicky and half-baked.

Overall, Foreigner coasted through this good-natured show on a handful of classic hits. It was hardly the most exciting of rock spectacles, but just enough to warm up a wintry Cardiff evening.

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