Jade Thirlwall Review: Pop's Quirkiest Artist Transcends Manufactured Origins

Harry Styles aside, individual artistic journeys of ex-participants of televised singing competition groups seldom grip the audience's attention. They usually follow predictable patterns – either an attempt at a toughened-up R&B sound, replete with at least a track featuring a cameo by an American rapper, or a lunge towards “grownup” Radio 2-friendly smooth pop-rock territory – and they typically become a dimly remembered placeholder, the visual and auditory experience of someone enthusiastically passing the years before the inevitable reunion tour.

An Idiosyncratic Path

It’s a state of affairs that makes the idiosyncratic path currently taken 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 wont to do, among them emphatically stating that she's free from 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 fan displaying the phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from Gossip, her collaboration with dance duo Confidence Man – but regardless, the music she’s opted to make is pop of a noticeably more intriguing stripe than usual.

An Impressive First Single

She launched her individual career with the previous year's excellent her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jolting and disjointed melange of big pop balladry, loud electronic instruments and audio excerpts from the classic track Puppet On A String by Sandie Shaw.

As the set on her initial individual concert series proves, not everything on her debut album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as her debut single: Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it’s also typical dancefloor-oriented pop, powered by precisely the Supremes sample its title suggests; the show is extended with a cover of the Madonna classic Frozen that devolves into a medley of nineties club anthems, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to Set You Free by N-Trance.

Additional Fascinating Content

But there’s also more where Angel Of My Dreams came from. Headache melds an Abba-esque chorus with song sections that offer a nearly discordant brand of funk or are surrounded with deep reverberation. She offers Unconditional to her mum: it features a wonderful tune, early 80s syndrums, and crashing rock guitar allied to clanging industrial drums. IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the sound of 2000s electronic punk movement, or rather the exciting variation of millennium-era popular music that was heavily influenced by electroclash, while the track Natural at Disaster starts out like a keyboard-led emotional song before unexpectedly swerving into a malevolent electronic grind.

An Appealing Presence

The artist on stage is a hugely appealing, delightfully authentic figure: she is, she announces at one point, “trembling uncontrollably”; giving a shoutout to her queer audience members, who are here in force, she proposes thanking them by adding a official undergarment to the merchandise booth.

Future Possibilities

It could conclude the manner these kind of solo careers end – the enmity towards former bandmate her previous colleague Jesy Nelson expressed in the song Natural at Disaster resolved, a media announcement to announce that the original group are reunited – but the fact that every attendee seem to be knowing every lyric as they join in vocally to a record that only came out a few weeks prior makes you wonder. And even if it does, the closing Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Thirlwall’s solo career is unlikely to recede into the realms of the barely recalled interim project.

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