Dinner Party      Artist: Niall HoranLabel: Capitol RecordsWhen he was asked, earlier this year, about the prospects of his fellow former One Direction bandmates, Louis Tomlinson said that he never had any doubts about Niall Horan having a bright future. “He’s Irish, he’s lovely, everyone loves him.”Tomlinson’s comments had the air of faint praise: he was lauding Horan as that nice boy next door, with the chirpy grin and the acoustic guitar, rather than acknowledging his achievements as a songwriter. Yet of all of One Direction, it is Horan who has forged the most consistent post-1D career – and that includes Harry Styles, whose recent wannabe-Bowie album, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally, talks a good game but ultimately doesn’t have a whole lot to say: his apparent craving for critical credibility is ultimately less an inspiration than a distraction.Horan, by contrast, has found a lane where his sunny, insouciant songcraft can freewheel to its heart’s content – and on Dinner Party, his cheery fourth LP, he maintains the solid trajectory that has defined his career since 1D called it a day in 2015. It’s spectacularly unspectacular, a dependable album from an artist who knows what he’s good at and whose songwriting feels rooted in a genuinely optimistic world-view. He isn’t putting on a smile for the audience: this is who he is. No matter your opinion of Simon Cowell-approved boy bands, there’s something endearing about that.Still, he isn’t skating by on charm alone. Working with a team that includes the Los Angeles producer John Ryan and the Lorde collaborator Joel Little, Horan has produced a joyously moreish collection of mid-tempo pop that makes the most of his sunny falsetto and never stumbles from upbeat into cloying.That isn’t to say Horan doesn’t have his demons. The big talking point on the LP is its closing tune, End of an Era, a thoughtful, melancholic farewell to his late bandmate Liam Payne, who died, in 2024, at the age of 31. It’s a beautifully vulnerable tribute from Horan, who saw Payne just a few weeks before his death.“Our friendship was a bond that was there forever even if we hadn’t seen each other for a while, and it’s wild that one day, like the flick of a switch, he’s gone,” he said in a recent interview. That sense of dazed disbelief carries over to End of an Era, where Horan’s voice is pitched so high it’s as if he’s trying to float above his grief.Elsewhere, the tone is one of restrained bubbliness. Horan has named Damien Rice as an inspiration for Dinner Party, which is unsurprising given that the Mullingar artist would have been a teenager discovering music when Rice was at his peak. But other influences are even clearer. The spirit of Death Cab for Cutie and Tame Impala – indie bands who don’t mind shifting a few units – shimmers through the restrained alt-pop of Tastes So Good and the title track.Where the project falls down slightly is with the ballads: She Gets It from Her Mother sounds like a Eurovision entry that RTÉ rejected early in the process; Better Man has the air of a pub singer treating his audience to one of his own songs before he gets back to covering Garth Brooks and The Eagles.Upbeat pop is where Horan is in his element. Fighting Over Nothing surfs on swooping soft-rock guitars, while Boys Are Fun is an agreeable 1970s-inflected homage to Harry Nilsson and Billy Joel.Dinner Party also rings last orders on a year of reckoning for 1D alumni. All four surviving band members have released albums in 2026, to generally underwhelming effect. Horan doesn’t seem to view himself as in competition with the rest of the group. But if he were, it would surely cheer him to know that, of all of those records, his is (sorry, Harry) the most accomplished by some distance.