the future is now

One Direction are weary, and they can see the light at the end of the tunnel. The boyband have only to play a handful of dates of their jet-lagged sounding On The Road Again world tour before they can embark on a hiatus that has been four years, four albums and several make-up lines in the making.

But first, curiously, they had to play to their smallest audience since 2011: 1,700 people who won free tickets in a ballot. As long-haired heartthrob Harry Styles delighted in pointing out, there were men in the crowd, they had beards, and they were cheering.

This, just weeks after announcing they will be “taking a break”, mere months after bandmate Zayn Malik left them, to “make real music”.

Styles, along with Niall Horan, Liam Payne and Louis Tomlinson, kept up few pretences of chummy professional excitement: these were young men doing their day job of bashing out foot-stomping songs with the ease that their angelic voices and effortless good looks allowed. They stood metres apart, united instead by matching spray-on black jeans and a shared first person pronoun. When Horan felt the heat and disappeared off stage to recover, they joked: “We’ve lost another one! They’re dropping like flies!”

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This one-off set was a boiled down version of their juggernaut stadium show. No fireworks, but a smattering of 15 hits, from their first as an X Factor-ed band, What Makes You Beautiful, to their first as a foursome, Drag Me Down. It showed how they have transformed from keen, clean teens to tattooed men who have outgrown some of their output.

Perhaps Little Things, an endearing ballad from their third album which hints at sexual maturity, is one such song. Payne ably took on Malik’s soprano parts, but the band were restless, and the crowd with them. While Louis and Liam dueted during Night Changes, Styles gesticulated with amorous fans. One Direction appeared a band more weathered than their years, an undercurrent of brotherly bickering reminiscent of that between Roger Daltry and Pete Townshend of Horan’s beloved The Who.

Payne admitted that he had “never been so nervous” than before this Roundhouse show, after years of being placed on an arena-sized pedestal. But the smaller space brought with it an honesty and intimacy that allowed personality to shine through more hollow on-stage patter. Styles’s dry wit – he rattled off the band’s extensive merchandise (“we’ve got bedsheets, masking tape”) – was charming. Horan, slipping into lead guitar, looked comfortable jamming with the backing band.