Jade Review: The Music World's Quirkiest Star Transcends Manufactured Origins
With the exception of Harry Styles, the solo careers of ex-participants of TV talent show-manufactured bands rarely capture the audience's attention. These efforts typically adhere to predictable patterns – often a pursuit 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” mainstream-approved smooth pop-rock territory – and they usually amount to a barely recalled interim project, the visual and auditory experience of someone gamely killing time prior to the unavoidable reunion tour.
A Unique Journey
It’s a state of affairs that renders the unconventional route currently taken by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall surprisingly refreshing. She definitely participates in doing the kind of things that former talent show band members are wont to do, including loudly underlining that she's free from the press-managed restrictions of the manufactured pop industry – based on tonight’s crowd, the most popular item on the merchandise stall is a handheld cooling device displaying the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from 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 opened her solo account with last year’s superb Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jarring and disjointed mixture of big pop balladry, noisy synthesisers 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 debut album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as that: the track Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it's equally standard-issue disco pop, powered by precisely the Motown musical snippet the name implies; the show is extended with a cover of Madonna’s Frozen that transforms into a medley of 90s dance hits, from 808’s Pacific State to Set You Free by N-Trance.
More Intriguing Material
But there’s also more material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. Headache melds an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba 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 fabulous melody, early 80s syndrums, and crashing rock guitar allied to metallic pounding beats. 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 the electroclash genre, while the track Natural at Disaster begins like a piano ballad before unexpectedly swerving into a dark computerized noise.
A Charming Performer
The woman at its centre is a hugely appealing, cheerily unvarnished presence: she is, she announces at a certain moment, “trembling uncontrollably”; shouting out her LGBTQ+ fanbase, 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 way such individual artistic pursuits typically finish – the hostility towards former bandmate her previous colleague Jesy Nelson voiced within Natural at Disaster patched up, a press conference to declare that the original group are reunited – but the reality that every attendee appear word-perfect as they sing along to an album that was released just a month ago causes one to ponder. And should it occur, the closing performance of 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 Manchester venue O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester tonight and is touring the UK through October 23rd.
