Gig review: Hilary Duff at AO Arena, Manchester

How does a onetime Disney Channel teen idol revive their musical fortunes just shy of two decades on from their halcyon days beneath the pop-chart spotlights? For Hilary Duff, the answer has proven a less thorny affair than it has for most of those post-contemporaries that traced her footsteps throughout her late-noughties pomp and beyond – batten down the hatches, bolt the door behind her and get stuck firmly into the music with minimal extra fuss.

It is a recipe that, in the new-generation era of the maximalist stage spectacular, could risk a certain quaintness. But like Olivia Rodrigo, the Houston-born superstar’s decision to engage long-time fans with nothing more than her pipes and a crack five-piece band underneath the spotlight is no calculated gamble – it is a straight win that allows her to reconnect on the back of a two-decade-long absence from Manchester and the highs of the Still Most Wanted Tour.

Duff’s prolonged hiatus from live activity – this year’s Luck... or Something, her first album for 11 years, has heralded her biggest jaunt since the Blair administration – has not dimmed her charisma.

Initially gleaned in silhouette for the sublime pogo-power-hooks that ignite the touchpaper on opener Wake Up, she proceeds to deliver with joyous abandon, her grin split across her face as she swaggers through the effervescent sway of So Yesterday and Beat of My Heart’s syncopated sugar-rush.

Nor has her ability to work an audience been diminished; when she flicks a mock magic wand about in the shape of the Mouse House’s ears amid the glossy sparklers of Future Tripping, the responsive screams leave her dazzled with delight.

Cloying tributes to fandom and family are in wonderfully short supply – Duff opts instead for a can of Vimto and partisan football quips to pull any non-believers on side – while the depth of her new material holds up impressively well.

Roommates offers a seamless transition to the post-Antanoff pop landscape; Growing Up refashions blink-182’s snot-punk radio-staple into the Eighties-hued melancholy it always threatened under its sawtooth thrash.

But the major cheers remain reserved for post-millennial nostalgia: Fly, Why Not, Come Clean. “It’s been a big night!” Duff cries before Lizzie McGuire-era favourite What Dreams Are Made Of closes out with a pyrotechnic balloon-party flourish.

So it was – and a rousingly enjoyable one, too.