It wasn’t exactly a searing rock ‘n’ roll show on Tuesday at The Ark. But Nick Lowe, making a rare appearance backed by a band, played a heartfelt, well-paced show that leaned as much on surprising choices as it did old standbys.

Nick Lowe publicity photo

Lowe, at 61, appeared enlivened by the opportunity to play with his band, which gave him the opportunity to stretch out some arrangements, improvise some verses and generally let his bandmates to most of the heavy lifting.

All he had to deliver were those amazing songs — new ones, old chestnuts, perennials and evergreens, some of which have emerged as modern-day standards — in his impossibly suave style.

Opening solo acoustic with the brand-new tearjerker, “Stoplight Roses,” Lowe stayed on stage by himself through “Heart” and “What’s Shakin’ on the Hill” before bringing the band out to careen through a 75-minute that shared a sense of restraint with his recent solo shows, while showing that he can still please his fans who know him when he used to rock ‘n’ roll.

In fact, the band, anchored by Geraint Watkins on keys and Johnny Scott on guitar, is neither a straight-up rock outfit, nor the rockabilly combo it more often resembled. Able and nimble, it was able to swing when necessary, it occasionally fell short when attempting to duplicate raveups like “Cruel to be Kind” and, yes, “I Knew the Bride.”

Not that the songs necessarily needed the accompaniment. In stripped-down form, they occasionally come across better than in the half-hearted band versions.

However, most of Tuesday’s show consisted of tunes in the vein of Lowe’s current late-career emergence as an aging rocker with a sardonic, world-weary view of the human condition. And on these gentle, mid-tempo shuffles, waltzes and ballads, the band, particularly Watkins, who also opened she show, shined.

There was “Lately I’ve Let Things Slide” as a heartbreaking paean to dissipation; “I Trained Her to Love Me” with the band allowing Lowe the freedom to scat a few nonsense lyrics; and “Long-Limbed Girl,” which has emerged as one of Lowe’s true masterpieces.

And alongside other classics, like “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace Love and Understanding,” which has now officially been stripped to its perfect essentials, ”I Live on a Battlefield” and “When I Write the Book,” Lowe slipped in a gorgeously reworked version of the album cut “Raining Raining” and a jazzy “You Inspire Me.”

Nick Lowe performing “What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace Love and Understanding” this summer:

By the time a second brief encore ended the show after 90 minutes with a stunningly stark, solo-acoustic “The Beast In Me,” it was Lowe who had inspired with a show that proved that he can still rock out — if somewhat gingerly.

Will Stewart is a free-lance writer who covers music for AnnArbor.com.