Nobody in One Direction can really sing, they barely dance, and Harry Styles missed a major cue at one point, legging it from the back of the stage when he was supposed to be catapulted through the floor with the rest of his bandmates. But they seem to have taken to their fame so casually that it hardly matters if Styles and his four partners—while totally gorgeous—are only slightly more talented than you or a better-than-average karaoke hound.

Compared to the cloying fake sincerity of Backstreet Boys or any groomed-within-an-inch-of-its-life boy band that preceded it, U.K.’s One Direction is refreshingly ordinary. That it also has a handful of distinguishing pop songs under its belt—“Heart Attack”, “More Than This”, “Rock Me”, “Summer Love”, all played before an insanely pumped Rogers Arena when the group rolled through on its Take Me Home tour on Saturday (July 27)—makes the situation tolerable. Especially if you’re a parent sitting there raising an eyebrow at the Clash riff smuggled into the opening bars of “What Makes You Beautiful” (which is pretty great in its own right) or the sheer audacity of the band’s “Teenage Kicks” cover.

The truth is there’s something hilarious about the way One Direction, short of anything approaching choreography, spent that last song just skipping around the stage in a circle. The reason it charms is because everyone in the band is fully cognizant and perfectly at ease with their basic averageness. When Louis Tomlinson’s voice petered out badly during a key part of the ballad “Moments”, it prompted no more than a cheerfully resigned shrug from the guy. Unless my eyes deceived me, the rest of One Direction—usually led by Niall Horan, who did pick up a guitar for about half the show, to be fair—seemed utterly amused by each other’s flubs.

The on-stage good humour was infectious. If evil overlord Simon Cowell can be credited with anything, it’s putting together five boys (now men, with facial hair and sinewy, grown-up bodies) who know how to have a good time. Shown during a costume change, a video of the band pranking people in London was genuinely very funny. Oh, and in this case, "costume change" means they all swapped T-shirts and jeans for a different set of T-shirts and jeans. In fact, besides a predictably brilliant light and video show—standouts included the retro vector video game art for “Kiss You” and comic-book panels for a cover of Wheatus’s “Teenage Dirtbag”—this could have been an alternative-universe bar band, complete with comic banter. To put it in perspective, could you ever describe any of the Backstreet Boys as likable?

Equally, an arena full of female pituitary glands was prematurely kick-started into action this evening. You could make the argument that One Direction is the latest in a possibly sinister line of phenomena manufactured to indoctrinate young women into pop culture’s cult of phallus worship. (Wand erection, anyone?) But you’d sound crazy if you did, and even crazier if you tried to deny that this is about as engaging as the tween zeitgeist can possibly get.

Georgia Straight, July 2013