"Do you fancy some pantomime-style audience participation? Let's take this in tiers," announces frontman Guy Garvey unexpectedly, taking advantage of Koko's wedding cake layout. He invites us to clap along to the title track of the new album, Leaders of the Free World, a political ode that depicts the reigning oligarchs as pesky little lads chucking stones. Since Elbow are a band known for their slow, beerstained anti-anthems, it's a brave move to ask their audience to do anything complicated. Unsurprisingly, it doesn't quite work.

"The top half were a bit rubbish," teases Garvey. "You got anything to say fer yerselves? Who won the Mercurys?" Elbow were nominated for the award with their 2001 debut, and have since perfected their songwriting art to release a third album of tunes tightly woven around a narrow range of notes. Rarely gathering speed or deviating from their journey, yet remaining strangely and hauntingly fluid, their guitar-led songs are both witty and sad. Perhaps appropriately for a band from the north-west, a lot of the lyrics are about rain, although allusions to air sea rescue and periscopes sex up the aquatic dossier somewhat.

Older favourite Newborn is dedicated to guitarist Mark Potter, a recent father, with some giddy Wurlitzer sounds coming from the keyboard, but as torch songs go it is outshone by newer classics in the making such as Forget Myself and Great Expectations. Switching Off sees Garvey getting messianic, arms outstretched, basking in a blue light, although the quasispiritual moment comes to a rapid end when he announces that the band are not coming back on stage until we sing the theme from The Littlest Hobo. Showing our age, we just about manage it.

"And if five chunky northerners with a handful of tunes can make a room full of people remember that," Garvey declares, "surely we can get these knobs out of parliament?"

· At Manchester Ritz tonight. Box office: 0161-832 1111.