Gig review: Niall Horan at First Direct Arena, Leeds

“Ey up, Leeds,” Niall Horan announces in a comedically thick Yorkshire accent. Before him, several thousand screaming fans – predominantly women ranging from preadolescence to their late-twenties, but equally as deafening – threaten to puncture his eardrums. He flashes a megawatt smile and shakes his guitar by the neck like a prize catch, rattling it heavenward.

Of all the solo careers that sailed after One Direction foundered, the Irishman has arguably been the most readily consistent of the bunch. Neither catapulted to stadium success, nor left with relative commercial anonymity, he is effectively The X Factor generation’s answer to Gary Barlow; a steadily innocuous purveyor of MOR soft-rock tunes and folk-pop ditties.

It has earned him a regular spot on radio airwaves and chart countdowns; this year’s third record The Show debuted at number one, and was sandwiched by legs of enormo-dome dates and festival slots across the globe.

Here at the First Direct Arena – reportedly over a decade since he last came to the city when his ex-boyband played Temple Newsam for the now-defunct Party in the Park in 2012 – the singer comes with a slickly honed live production smartly pared back enough to let his everybloke charm shine.

Amid songs such as the strident Small Talk and the mid-eighties-licked On the Loose, he strolls the line between showmanship and self-confessional with skilled aplomb. “This place looked big during soundcheck,” he confesses from behind his keyboard early on. “But now it’s filled up, it’s humongous.”

There isn’t too much variation from the sonic templates Horan has staked out so far, though he has flourishes to match the beefed-up sound; Save My Life features a lively keytar solo, while an acoustic set capped by You Could Start a Cult runs with dissonant bursts of harmonica.

He dips into his own deep past just once, and earns a hysterical reaction for Night Changes, lit by a massive glitterball. As fans decked out in feather garlands and deely-boppers hued in the Irish tricolour swoon, he signs a custom jacket for a fan down the front before an earnestly effective Mirrors and Still.

“I’ve waited so long to play a gig in this building for you Yorkshire people,” he says as a bass drum shudder threatens to crack a closing Slow Hands wide open. “It’s my wildest dreams come true.” For him, and nearly everybody else, the feeling appears assuredly mutual.