Jade Review: The Music World's Quirkiest Artist Transcends TV-Created Origins

Harry Styles aside, individual artistic journeys of ex-participants of televised singing competition groups seldom grip the audience's attention. These efforts typically adhere to predictable patterns – either an attempt at a toughened-up R&B sound, complete with at least a track including a cameo by an American rapper, or a move into “grownup” Radio 2-friendly polished adult contemporary – and they usually amount to a barely recalled interim project, the sight and sound of someone gamely killing time prior to the unavoidable band comeback concerts.

A Unique Journey

This common scenario that makes the idiosyncratic path thus far followed by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She definitely participates in doing the kind of things that ex-reality TV group artists are known for undertaking, including loudly underlining that she's free from the media-trained constraints of the manufactured pop industry – based on tonight’s crowd, the top-selling product on the merchandise stall is a handheld cooling device displaying the phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from the track Gossip, her musical partnership with electronic pair the group Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the songs she has chosen to create is pop of a noticeably more intriguing stripe than usual.

An Impressive First Single

She opened her solo account with the previous year's excellent her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jolting and fragmented melange of grand emotional pop songs, noisy synthesisers and audio excerpts from the classic track Puppet On A String by Sandie Shaw.

As the set on her initial individual concert series demonstrates, not every song on her first full-length release That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as her debut single: Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it’s also standard-issue disco pop, driven by precisely the Supremes sample its title suggests; things are padded out with a interpretation of the Madonna classic Frozen that devolves into a musical compilation of 90s dance hits, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.

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 offer a nearly discordant brand of funk or are enfolded by deep reverberation. She offers Unconditional to her mum: it features a fabulous melody, eighties-style electronic percussion, and powerful guitar riffs allied to clanging industrial drums. The song IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the sound of 2000s electronic punk movement, or more accurately the thrilling strain of early 00s pop that was strongly inspired by electroclash, while the track Natural at Disaster begins like a piano ballad before suddenly shifting into a malevolent electronic grind.

An Appealing Presence

The artist on stage is a hugely appealing, cheerily unvarnished figure: she is, she announces at one point, “trembling uncontrollably”; shouting out her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are present in large numbers, she proposes thanking them by adding a official undergarment to the merchandise booth.

What Lies Ahead

It may well end the way such individual artistic pursuits end – the enmity towards former bandmate her previous colleague Jesy Nelson expressed in the song Natural at Disaster patched up, a press conference to declare that the original group are reunited – but the fact that the entire audience seem to be knowing every lyric as they join in vocally to a record that only came out a month ago causes one to ponder. And should it occur, the final Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Thirlwall’s solo career is unlikely to recede into the domain of the barely recalled interim project.

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