Album Review: Niall Horan, Dinner Party

Flicker, Heartbreak Weather, The Show, Dinner Party – and hey presto, Niall Horan is four mammoth albums into his stellar solo career. If Harry Styles turned post-One Direction life into theatre, fashion and pop-cultural spectacle, Niall has charted more pacific waters – the craftsman’s route.

The results have been commercially formidable – No. 1 albums, arena tours, enduring radio singles – but his success has moved with the confidence of a man who does need to cannonball into the room.

Sonically, Dinner Party sits in the territory of polished soft-rock, sunlit indie-pop and 1970s singer-songwriter warmth.

There are shades of Fleetwood Mac in the clean melodic lines, Snow Patrol in the emotional directness, and Laurel Canyon in the guitars and easy conversational glow. ‘Tastes So Good’ gallops out the gate with larruping drums, big rock guitars, and a chorus custom-built for joyous arenas and festival fields.

Album bedfellows ‘Monochromatic’ and ‘From Her Mother’ remind us that Eagles DNA pumps through Horan’s veins, albeit pimped for the post-modern age. Similarly, ‘Boys Are Fun’ channels solo Don Henley with a decent dollop of Harold Faltermeyer melody, which is only ever a good thing.

Niall has also cited Damien Rice as an abiding influence, which the emotional exposure of ‘Better Man’ is a calling card for. Ditto ‘Die If I Don’t’ with its acoustic intimacy and discerning lyric.

Elsewhere, the title track and ‘Little More Time’ define the album’s disarmingly simple manifesto – the assured belief that small emotional moments can carry the weight of a life.

8/10