Here’s a mystery for you. Why were Spoon, one of the most dynamic, sharpest rock bands in the world, playing a single night in a north London town hall (capacity 890) while Arctic Monkeys were playing three nights at Arsenal’s ground (capacity 59,000) as part of a UK tour that encompassed eight other stadiums in the UK, plus one arena, one park and Glastonbury? It’s not that Arctic Monkeys aren’t good – no one gets that kind of critical unanimity without being good. It’s just that Spoon are better, and better than almost everyone else.

So why aren’t Spoon filling stadiums? First, they rarely come to the UK. They do big rooms in America where they’ve had number one albums, but for many years their albums were hard to come by here so there wasn’t much point touring. Second, they’re called Spoon, which is a terrible name for a band. Third, they seem a bit sensible. There’s nothing very wild about Spoon – they are now middle-aged men for whom this is a serious job. For many years the biggest story about them was that they were the best-reviewed group in the world, according to the review aggregations site Metacritic. Fourth, they’re perhaps a bit too good.

Spoon are a simple group: their songs are spare, sometimes skeletal, melodic, energetic. And onstage in London, aided by a genius sound engineer who made every single thing that happened count, they were perfection. Every tap of the hi-hat, every brush of a keyboard, every twang of guitar was as clear as quartz. Nothing was lost in a morass of sound. It was a chance to marvel not just at the usual suspects – the guitarists Alex Fischel, Gerardo Larios and Britt Daniel (also the singer and songwriter) – but at the drummer, Jim Eno. His restraint was crucial. No fill was overdone; nothing unnecessary intruded.

Spoon have now made ten albums, and every single one of them has moments of wonder (though Daniel largely disavows their debut, Telephono). So a 75-minute set featured tracks from nine of them – from a stellar ‘Metal Detektor’, on their second record, through to standouts from last year’s Lucifer on the Sofa and a thrilling cover of John Lennon’s ‘Isolation’. A dub flavour was inserted into the set of Lucifer – heavy bursts of echo, some shuddering frequencies. It was a masterclass on how to adapt songs to a live setting: don’t make them unrecognisable, make them just a little more eccentric.

You might call Spoon an art-rock band, but that sounds forbidding. Better perhaps to think of them as a completely conventional rock band pushed just off the median line.

As their tour began, Arctic Monkeys were widely mocked for the notes in their programme, which compared them to the Beatles for having made seven albums of unstinting quality. (That’s still fewer than Spoon, fellas.) Arctic Monkeys’ audience has grown with them, but only in size not in range. The vast crowd pogoed, cheered and sang along right to the end of the pitch, 100 yards from the stage. Moshpits broke out; pints of beer went flying.

It all left me completely cold. Part of that, I suspect, is down to the character of frontman Alex Turner. There’s an old joke about Van Morrison: ‘Why do so many music writers hate Van Morrison? Because they’ve met him.’ That holds true for Turner. Though he’s good-looking and charismatic, he radiates an air of disdain, with his cod-transatlantic accent and shades that remained in place even as the dark drew in. A little likeability goes a long way, and Turner is not interested in being likeable.

That said, when Arctic Monkeys thrill, they thrill completely. I’d be astonished if Turner got any pleasure at all out of playing their ferocious and brilliant debut single any longer but when they finished the show with ‘I Bet That You Look Good on the Dancefloor’, it was impossible not to feel the adrenaline rush of 59,000 people going berserk. Even in the stadium’s corporate seats, you could feel the first-tier shudder and shake. I was never bored but that was the only time I felt exhilarated.