Jade Thirlwall Review: The Music World's Most Unique Star Rises Above TV-Created Past

Harry Styles aside, individual artistic journeys of former members of televised singing competition groups seldom grip the audience's attention. They usually follow certain rules – often a pursuit at a toughened-up R&B sound, complete with at least a track featuring a cameo by an US hip-hop artist, or a lunge towards mature Radio 2-friendly smooth pop-rock territory – and they typically become a barely recalled interim project, the visual and auditory experience of someone enthusiastically passing the years before the inevitable reunion tour.

A Unique Journey

This common scenario that makes the idiosyncratic path currently taken 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 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 fan displaying the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from Gossip, her collaboration with electronic pair Confidence Man – but regardless, 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 the previous year's excellent her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jolting and fragmented melange of grand emotional pop songs, loud electronic instruments and audio excerpts from the classic track Puppet On A String by Sandie Shaw.

During the performance on her initial individual concert series proves, not every song on her first full-length release That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as her debut single: the track Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it's equally typical dancefloor-oriented pop, powered by precisely the Motown musical snippet its title suggests; things are padded out with a cover of the Madonna classic Frozen that transforms into a musical compilation of nineties club anthems, from 808’s Pacific State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.

More Intriguing Material

However, there exists additional material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. The song Headache combines an Abba-esque chorus with song sections that offer a borderline atonal brand of funk or are surrounded with deep reverberation. She dedicates the track Unconditional to her mum: it has a wonderful tune, early 80s syndrums, and crashing rock guitar combined with clanging industrial drums. The song IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the musical aesthetic of early 00s electroclash, or more accurately the thrilling strain of early 00s pop that was heavily influenced by electroclash, while the track Natural at Disaster starts out like a piano ballad before suddenly shifting into a dark computerized noise.

A Charming Performer

The artist on stage is a hugely appealing, delightfully authentic figure: she declares, she states at one point, “shaking like a shitting dog”; shouting out her queer audience members, who are present in large numbers, she suggests showing appreciation by adding a branded jockstrap to the merch stand.

Future Possibilities

It may well end the manner such individual artistic pursuits end – the hostility towards former bandmate Jesy Nelson expressed in Natural at Disaster resolved, a press conference to announce that the original group are reunited – but the fact that the entire audience appear word-perfect as they join in vocally to a record that only came out a few weeks prior causes one to ponder. And should it occur, the final performance of Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Thirlwall’s solo career is not destined to fade into the realms of the dimly remembered placeholder.

• Jade performs at the O2 Victoria Warehouse in the city of Manchester tonight and is touring the UK through October 23rd.