MARLOW: What’s the loveliest word in the English language, officer? In the sound it makes in the mouth? In the shape it makes in the page? E-L-B-O-W.

– Dennis Potter, The Singing Detective

It all seemed so straightforward. I’d missed the Mercury award on Tuesday night, preferring to spend my time blinking in painful astonishment at exactly how bad John Coltrane’s Ascension is; while I don’t hate jazz as much as I pretend to, I don’t think I’ve ever heard any record so straightforwardly un-enjoyable. But it didn’t matter: Burial was going to win, because it had been guitar bands the last two years, and A N Insider had put an eye-watering amount of money on it, and dubstep’s just so hot right now. Or Radiohead would get it, by way of a Lifetime Achievement Award/sorry-we-didn’t-give-it-to-OK Computer gesture. No point watching.

Then I woke up Wednesday and remembered that Elbow had been on the list, and I was sad that they hadn’t won; squeezed out by their very nature: not quite cool enough, not quite big enough. So I listened to Asleep in the Back on the DLR and started drafting my own little love letter to one of the most precious bands in Britain. I thought it would be a good excuse to dredge up the Nick Cave line about an award ceremony as a “tumbrel, a bloody cart of severed heads and glittering prizes”. I’d go on about how Elbow were bigger and better and more important than any award. Awards. Who needs them? And then, of course, I got to work and found out that they’d won the thing. How embarrassing.

First things first: it’s a cracking record. The Seldom-Seen Kid is named in honour of Bryan Glancy, ex-member of I Am Kloot and doyen of the Manchester music scene, who died two years ago. The album closes with a painfully direct farewell: “Never very good at goodbyes/ So – gentle shoulder charge – love you, mate”. But the album which grows from its melancholy roots into something beautifully enriching: yes, there is death, but before that there is life and love, there is me and you. There is Richard Hawley singing a cute/silly/odd song about fixing a horse race, there is Tom Waitsy stompage, there are trumpets and bells, sing-alongs, sob-alongs, everything you could really ask for.

Guy Garvey once described their music as “prog without the solos”, and while he was probably half-joking you can see what he means. They’ve made four albums of consistent quality and craft, and within those albums they’ve constructed songs of careful and restrained complexity. Listening to the interplay of piano and guitar that drives “Powder Blue”, or the soaring ‘cellos that lift “Red”, or the plaintive melody of “Fugitive Motel”, or the Glastonbury crowd closing out “Grace Under Pressure” is listening to a band of rare dedication and talent polish their songs until they gleam.

Allied to this is the all-too-rare pleasure of listening to a vocalist who clearly sweats over every word. “You are the only thing in any room you’re ever in”; “We kiss like we invented it”; “I’m proud to be the one you hold when the shakes begin”; “You’re a tragedy starting to happen”. Familiar without being clichéd, tight but not trite, they sit well on the page and simply fly in the songs. It helps that Guy Garvey’s voice is suffused with a smoky wistfulness, enabling him to avoid the cheap bombast or faux-snarl of so many of his contemporaries. Listening to him whisper “Darling, is this love?” packs more emotional heft than a million Chris Martins could ever hope to wail into an echoing stadium.

So why were they surprising victors? Why haven’t they been garlanded and feted and lauded to the heavens for many long years? Their career has progressed to a steady drip of critical praise and approval, and as the above will show you, Elbow fans love Elbow more than is probably sensible. Perhaps there’s never been that career-defining moment for them that bands need to go from good band to Good Band. It’s wonderful that they’ve never been the Next Big Thing; it’s enabled them to develop in their own time at their own pace. But there’s always been a vague feeling of injustice, too, that they’ve never quite got the love they deserve when so many inferior others have glimpsed so much more, however briefly. Revered without being relevant: that’s them. But then Burial made a great record and is at the forefront of an undercurrent; Radiohead made a great record and, well, they’re Radiohead. Elbow were never going to win.

But it’s utterly brilliant that they did. The Mercury is a weird award, described by Antony Hegarty as “a crazy contest between an orange and a spaceship and a potted plant and a spoon – which do you prefer?” Usually the winner gets brickbats from somewhere or other: Antony and the Johnsons for not being English enough; Roni Size for not being OK Computer; M People for being fucking awful. The underlying point behind this carping is that given the silliness of the comparisons, there can’t be a right answer; so any possible answer must be wrong. I would go with spoon, or maybe spaceship, and I’m sure the potted plant lobby would decry this as hype-minded short-sighted tokenism. (Ever tried eating a grapefruit with a hydrangea, hippies?) Such is the nature of the beast.

Which is why it’s glorious to see a record so unhyped, unheralded, unfancied and undervalued get its moment. There’s no special interest at work here, no crest-of-a-fashion-wave giddiness that will subside the morning after. There’s simply a very good record, made by a very good band, which will enhance the lives of those who listen to it. Record sales have been known to jump 500% after a Mercury win, so that’ll be nice: after 17 years and all manner of record label chicanery, if anyone deserves some big fat royalty cheques it’s Elbow. And from a wider perspective, while these decisions are never right (that’s opinion, folks!), it’s nice to get one that can’t be shouted down as wrong for the wrong reasons. When was the last time a debate about the Mercury centred only on the music? Last Tuesday night. So all together now: “We still believe in love, so fuck you!”

MARLOW: Into each life some rain must fall.

Dr. GIBBON: Metaphysics?

MARLOW: Music.