🔗 Share this article

With the exception of Harry Styles, individual artistic journeys of ex-participants of TV talent show-manufactured bands rarely capture the audience's attention. They usually follow predictable patterns – often a pursuit at a more edgy urban music style, complete with at least one single including a guest appearance by an American rapper, or a lunge towards mature Radio 2-friendly polished adult contemporary – and they typically become a dimly remembered placeholder, the visual and auditory experience of someone gamely killing time prior to the unavoidable 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 definitely participates in doing the kind of things that ex-reality TV group artists are wont to do, including emphatically stating that she's free from the press-managed restrictions of the factory-produced music business – based on tonight’s crowd, the most popular item on the merchandise stall is a handheld cooling device displaying the phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from Gossip, her collaboration 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 the norm.

A Superb Debut

She opened her solo account with last year’s superb Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jolting and fragmented melange of grand emotional pop songs, noisy synthesisers and audio excerpts from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

As the set 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 also standard-issue disco pop, driven by exactly the Supremes sample its title suggests; the show is extended with a interpretation of Madonna’s 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 where Angel Of My Dreams came from. The song Headache melds an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with verses that present a borderline atonal style of rhythmic music or are enfolded by deep reverberation. She offers Unconditional to her mum: it has a wonderful tune, eighties-style electronic percussion, and crashing rock guitar allied to metallic pounding beats. The song IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the musical aesthetic of early 00s electroclash, or more accurately the exciting variation of millennium-era popular music that was heavily influenced by the electroclash genre, while Natural at Disaster begins like a piano ballad before suddenly shifting into a malevolent electronic grind.

A Charming Performer

The woman at its centre is a immensely likable, delightfully authentic presence: she is, she announces at a certain moment, “shaking like a shitting dog”; giving a shoutout to her queer audience members, who are here in force, she proposes showing appreciation by including a branded jockstrap to the merch stand.

What Lies Ahead

It may well end the manner such individual artistic pursuits 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 back – but the reality that every attendee appear knowing every lyric as they sing along to a record that was released just a month ago makes you wonder. And should it occur, the final Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Jade's individual musical path is unlikely to recede into the domain of the dimly remembered placeholder.

• Jade plays the O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester tonight and is touring the UK through October 23rd.