Jade Thirlwall Review: Pop's Most Unique Star Rises Above Manufactured Past

Harry Styles aside, individual artistic journeys of former members of televised singing competition groups rarely capture the audience's attention. They usually follow certain rules – either an attempt at a more edgy urban music style, replete with at least one single including a guest appearance by an American rapper, or a move into “grownup” mainstream-approved smooth pop-rock territory – and they usually amount to a dimly remembered placeholder, the sight and sound of someone gamely killing time prior to the unavoidable reunion tour.

An Idiosyncratic Path

This common scenario that makes the idiosyncratic path thus far followed by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She definitely participates in engaging in the typical activities that ex-reality TV group artists are wont to do, among them loudly underlining that she's free from the press-managed restrictions of the factory-produced music business – based on the audience this evening, the most popular item on the merchandise stall is a handheld cooling device displaying the phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from the track Gossip, her musical partnership with dance duo the group Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the music she’s opted to make is pop music with a far more fascinating style than the norm.

A Superb Debut

She opened her solo account with last year’s superb Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jolting and fragmented mixture of grand emotional pop songs, noisy synthesisers and samples from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

As the set on her initial individual concert series demonstrates, not everything on her debut album her album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as her debut single: Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it’s also standard-issue disco pop, driven by exactly the Motown musical snippet its title suggests; things are padded out with a interpretation of the Madonna classic Frozen that devolves into a musical compilation of nineties club anthems, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to Set You Free by N-Trance.

Additional Fascinating Content

However, there exists additional material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. Headache combines an Abba-esque chorus with verses that present a nearly discordant brand of funk or are enfolded by deep reverberation. She offers Unconditional to her mum: it features a fabulous melody, early 80s syndrums, and powerful guitar riffs allied to clanging industrial drums. The song IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the sound of 2000s electronic punk movement, or more accurately the exciting variation of early 00s pop that was heavily influenced by the electroclash genre, while Natural at Disaster begins like a piano ballad before unexpectedly swerving into a malevolent electronic grind.

An Appealing Presence

The woman at its centre is a hugely appealing, delightfully authentic presence: she is, she states at one point, “shaking like a shitting dog”; giving a shoutout to her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are here in force, she proposes thanking them by adding a official undergarment to the merch stand.

What Lies Ahead

It could conclude the manner such individual artistic pursuits typically finish – the enmity towards ex-group member her previous colleague Jesy Nelson expressed in Natural at Disaster patched up, a media announcement to announce that Little Mix are back – but the reality that the entire audience seem to be word-perfect as they join in vocally to a record that only came out a month ago causes one to ponder. And even if it does, the final Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Jade's individual musical path is unlikely to recede into the realms of the dimly remembered placeholder.

• Jade performs at the O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester tonight and is traveling across the United Kingdom until 23 October.