🔗 Share this article

With the exception of Harry Styles, individual artistic journeys of ex-participants of TV talent show-manufactured bands rarely capture the public imagination. These efforts typically adhere to certain rules – often a pursuit at a toughened-up R&B sound, replete with at least a track 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 visual and auditory experience of someone enthusiastically passing the years before the inevitable band comeback concerts.

An Idiosyncratic Path

This common scenario that makes the idiosyncratic path thus far followed by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall surprisingly refreshing. She’s certainly not above doing the kind of things that ex-reality TV group artists are known for undertaking, including emphatically stating that she’s no longer subject the press-managed restrictions of the factory-produced music business – based on the audience this evening, the top-selling product on the official goods stand is a handheld cooling device displaying the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from the track Gossip, her musical partnership with electronic pair the group Confidence Man – but regardless, the songs she has chosen to create is pop music with a far more fascinating style than usual.

An Impressive First Single

She opened her solo account with last year’s superb Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jolting and fragmented melange of big pop balladry, noisy synthesisers and samples from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

During the performance on her initial individual concert series proves, not everything on her debut album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as that: Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it’s also typical dancefloor-oriented pop, powered by precisely the Motown musical snippet its title suggests; the show is extended with a cover of the Madonna classic Frozen that devolves into a musical compilation of 90s dance hits, 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 melds an Abba-esque chorus with song sections that present a borderline atonal style of rhythmic music or are enfolded by cavernous echo. She dedicates the track Unconditional to her mum: it features a wonderful tune, early 80s syndrums, and powerful guitar riffs allied to metallic pounding beats. IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the sound of 2000s electronic punk movement, or more accurately the exciting variation of millennium-era popular music that was heavily influenced by electroclash, while the track Natural at Disaster starts out like a piano ballad before suddenly shifting into a malevolent electronic grind.

A Charming Performer

The woman at its centre is a hugely appealing, cheerily unvarnished presence: she declares, she states at a certain moment, “trembling uncontrollably”; giving a shoutout to her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are present in large numbers, she suggests thanking them by including a official undergarment to the merch stand.

Future Possibilities

It could conclude the way these kind of solo careers end – the hostility towards former bandmate Jesy Nelson voiced within the song Natural at Disaster resolved, a press conference to declare that Little Mix are reunited – but the fact that every attendee appear knowing every lyric as they join in vocally to an album that was released just a few weeks prior causes one to ponder. And should it occur, the final performance of Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Jade's individual musical path is unlikely to recede into the realms of the dimly remembered placeholder.

• Jade plays the O2 Victoria Warehouse in the city of Manchester this evening and is touring the UK through October 23rd.