Dinner Party

Dinner Party is the musical equivalent of a guest who arrives exactly on time, brings a decent bottle of mid-range white, compliments your cooking twice, and leaves before anyone has to fake a yawn. Niall Horan's fourth solo record is twelve tracks of aggressively pleasant pop rock that commits no crimes because it never leaves the house. The title track jangles agreeably, Little More Time sways with the conviction of a man who knows the chorus tested well, and End of an Era announces the end of absolutely nothing. Every guitar is sunlit, every melody lands precisely where your ear expected it to, and every emotional stake has been sanded down to the texture of a hotel duvet. This is craftsmanship, I will grant him that, the kind of polished soft rock that Capitol can sell to people who think Spotify's coffee shop playlist is a personality. But somewhere around track seven I realized I had been listening for twenty minutes and could not name a single moment that risked anything, said anything, or even raised its voice slightly. Horan has refined his sound to the point of refinement having nothing left to refine. It is cohesive, sure, in the way beige is cohesive. A dinner party where the food is fine, the wine is fine, the conversation is fine, and you drive home wondering why you feel slightly hungrier than when you arrived.