For his first album in three years, Niall Horan presents more of the same of his inoffensive guitar-strumming coffee shop bops. Outside of a few glimpses of Niall at his most fearless and exploratory, The Show plays it too safe to fully realize the potential of its concept. Nonetheless, “safe” still sounds just fine on the One Direction alum.

The “Slow Hands” singer kicked off the campaign for his third studio album with “Heaven,” a jaunty Michael Bublé-inflected bop about a love so powerful it must be from another realm. The song seemed to signal a deeper foray into the surf rock flirtations of the Beach Boys — an influence that has reared its head on each of Niall’s solo albums. “Heaven,” in tandem with a tracklist engineered to evoke the ebb and flow of a live performance set, pointed towards an album much less predictable than The Show. “If You Leave Me” offers some cool guitar licks in the chorus, but it’s more of the same nondescript mid-tempo pop fluff. “Meltdown,” which luckily houses some of Niall’s best songwriting on the album, is the billionth take on 80s-indebted synthpop since the turn of the decade, and it is certifiably flat. There’s also “Never Grow Up” a nostalgia-minded tune that recalls the mythos of Peter Pan and the maudlin melodies of Ed Sheeran alike.

Once the album reaches its halfway point, Niall finally rises above the sleepy haze of the album’s first four songs. “The Show” sits in the legacy of the theatrical existentialism of The Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby.” A stark sonic shift from the rest of the record, “The Show” thrives with its spacious, ominous production. Niall drops into the darker textures of his tone as he sings, “Mistakes and heartbreaks are no crime / But there's a light creepin' through under broken skies.” Easily the best song on the album, “The Show” is the first time the record feels urgent. It’s the first time the album truly feels worth paying attention to. Had the rest of The Show fully leaned into the melodrama of its concept and musical influences, Niall could have been looking at his grandest and most impressive artistic statement yet. Instead, we’re left with the shell of that, a collection of perfectly fine tracks that rarely, if only once or twice, challenge both audience and creator.

Elsewhere on the record, Niall offers standard pop fare. “Save My Life,” takes some cues from A-Ha for one of the album’s stronger selections, a high-stakes love song that would have benefited from a brighter mix. “You Could Start A Cult” is a fine folk-pop number, “Science” is a fine Coldplay-esque ballad, and “Must Be Love” is a fine closer. Everything on The Show is just fine. This isn’t necessarily a problem because not every album has to break new ground or change the course of music history, but The Show should not have to rely on one song to keep from being so lusterless.

Key Tracks: “Heaven” | “The Show” | “You Could Start A Cult” | “Save My Life”

Score: 60