When Embrace started off a few years ago, they crafted sublime, beautiful songs with subtlety and poise. However, critical acclaim never quite translated into sales and they ended up back in day jobs such as welding. However, since they re-emerged on the back of Gravity, a big, heart-tugging ballad Coldplay's Chris Martin donated to the band, nothing is left to chance. The new Embrace album, This New Day, has shot straight to number one.

Here, Embrace, er, embrace that old stadium-rock trick of warming up with tiny gigs. Danny McNamara was once derided for singing like a seal, but vocal coaching has now given him a voice suited to a boy band. He punches the air triumphantly. It's a gesture aimed at the man at the back in a 15,000 capacity stadium, not the chap two rows in muttering over his Guinness.

A similar sense of incongruity overwhelms when the forthcoming World Cup single - which sounds exactly like an Embrace World Cup single would - prompts shouts of "Enger-land" from two people. By now, though, McNamara is emerging as rock's equivalent of the spoof footie manager Mike Bassett - hapless, yes, but heroic.

He tells how the Charlatans bought Embrace champagne to celebrate their success and sounds more excited about meeting the Charlatans than his own chart topper. But when he dedicates signature singalong The Good Will Out to "all the people who made it through the rain", he's Embrace in microcosm. Cliched, but sincere; it beats welding.

· At Aberdeen Music Hall (01224 641122) tomorrow, then touring.