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

Harry Styles aside, the solo careers of former members of televised singing competition groups seldom grip the public imagination. They usually follow certain rules – often a pursuit at a toughened-up R&B sound, replete with at least a track including a guest appearance by an US hip-hop artist, or a move into “grownup” mainstream-approved smooth pop-rock territory – and they typically become a dimly remembered placeholder, the sight and sound of someone gamely killing time prior to the unavoidable reunion tour.

An Idiosyncratic Path

It’s a state of affairs that renders the unconventional route thus far followed by former Little Mix member 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 emphatically stating that she's free from the media-trained constraints of the factory-produced music business – judging by tonight’s crowd, the most popular item on the merchandise stall is a fan displaying the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from the track Gossip, her collaboration with dance duo the group Confidence Man – but regardless, the music she’s opted to make is pop music with a far more fascinating style than the norm.

An Impressive First Single

She launched her individual career with last year’s superb Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jolting and disjointed 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 everything on her first full-length release That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as her debut single: the track Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it's equally standard-issue disco pop, powered by exactly the Supremes sample its title suggests; the show is extended with a cover of Madonna’s 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 song sections that present a nearly discordant brand of funk or are enfolded by cavernous echo. She offers the track Unconditional to her mother: it has a wonderful tune, eighties-style electronic percussion, and crashing rock guitar allied to metallic pounding beats. IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the musical aesthetic of 2000s electronic punk movement, or rather the thrilling strain of early 00s pop that was strongly inspired by electroclash, while Natural at Disaster starts out like a piano ballad before suddenly shifting into a dark computerized noise.

An Appealing Presence

The artist on stage is a immensely likable, delightfully authentic presence: she is, she announces at a certain moment, “trembling uncontrollably”; giving a shoutout to her queer audience members, who are here in force, she suggests thanking them by adding a branded jockstrap to the merchandise booth.

Future Possibilities

It could conclude the way these kind of solo careers typically finish – the hostility towards former bandmate her previous colleague Jesy Nelson expressed in Natural at Disaster resolved, a media announcement to announce that the original group are reunited – but the fact that the entire audience appear knowing every lyric as they sing along to an album that only came out a few weeks prior causes one to ponder. And should it occur, the final Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Jade's individual musical path is unlikely to recede into the domain of the dimly remembered placeholder.

• Jade performs at the Manchester venue O2 Victoria Warehouse in the city of Manchester this evening and is traveling across the United Kingdom until 23 October.