In a less frantic era of pop, the rise of Editors at the start of this year to platinum-selling status with their first album, The Back Room, would have been much bigger news than it is. One of several new groups who have taken the doomy, arena-disco sound of Ian Curtis and Joy Division as their template — see also Interpol, the Departure — the Birmingham-based quartet have prevailed with little in the way of hard-sell or hype.

Using their headlining slot at the Shockwaves NME Awards showcase on Wednesday to start a major British tour, Editors performed a set of carefully sculpted songs with coiled intensity but little emotional involvement.

Tom Smith, the singer and guitarist, skipped on to the stage like a grasshopper. “I’ve got a million things to say,” he sang in his low, dark voice, which sounded promising, as the band cranked up the galloping riff of the opening number, Lights. While the drummer Ed Lay played skittering sixteenths on his hi-hat, and the bass player Russell Leetch hard-pedalled across all areas of his fretboard, Chris Urbanowicz supplied an urgent, clanging lead guitar part.

They proceeded to apply much the same instrumental scaffolding to a succession of numbers, including Blood, a new song called Bones and their biggest hit, Munich, while Smith’s vocals — halfway between a cry and a croon — became increasingly exercised while betraying precious little feeling.

Still, they had got the formula well nailed down, and their best numbers, such as the slower All Sparks and the U2-esque Bullets, packed a tremendous punch.

Richard Hawley, who was due to play before Editors, had called in sick, and so it fell to Brakes, the indie supergroup from Brighton featuring the brothers Tom and Alex White, formerly of the Electric Soft Parade, and the singer Eamon Hamilton, previously with British Sea Power, to smooth the way for the headliners.

A band with a droll sense of humour and an unnaturally low boredom threshold, Brakes navigated their way round an alternative pop universe in which dodgy disco tracks and fake country songs were interspersed with bundles of spiky, art-rock numbers that rarely lasted longer than two minutes, and frequently a lot less.

There were several moments of inspired eccentricity, the most memorable being a five-second song blasting the American Vice-President, Dick Cheney, which was evidently so good that they played it twice.

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