With the exception of Harry Styles, individual artistic journeys of former members of TV talent show-manufactured bands seldom grip the public imagination. These efforts typically adhere to predictable patterns – often a pursuit at a toughened-up R&B sound, replete with at least a track including a cameo by an US hip-hop artist, or a move into mature mainstream-approved smooth pop-rock territory – and they typically become a dimly remembered placeholder, the visual and auditory experience of someone enthusiastically passing the years prior to the unavoidable reunion tour.
This common scenario that renders the unconventional route thus far followed by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She definitely participates in doing the kind of things that former talent show band members are wont to do, among them emphatically stating that she’s no longer subject the media-trained constraints of the manufactured pop industry – based on tonight’s crowd, the most popular item on the merchandise stall is a fan emblazoned with the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from Gossip, her musical partnership with dance duo the group Confidence Man – but regardless, the music she’s opted to make is pop of a noticeably more intriguing stripe than usual.
She opened her solo account with the previous year's excellent Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jarring and fragmented mixture of grand emotional pop songs, loud electronic instruments and audio excerpts from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.
During the performance on her initial individual concert series proves, not every song 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 extremely memorable, but it's equally standard-issue disco pop, driven by exactly the Motown musical snippet its title suggests; things are padded out with a cover of the Madonna classic Frozen that transforms into a medley of nineties club anthems, from 808’s Pacific State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.
However, there exists additional material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. Headache combines an Abba-esque chorus with verses that offer a nearly discordant brand of funk or are enfolded by deep reverberation. She offers Unconditional to her mother: it has a wonderful tune, early 80s syndrums, and crashing rock guitar allied to metallic pounding beats. The song IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the sound of early 00s electroclash, or rather the exciting variation of millennium-era popular music that was strongly inspired by the electroclash genre, while the track Natural at Disaster starts out like a piano ballad before suddenly shifting into a dark computerized noise.
The artist on stage is a hugely appealing, cheerily unvarnished figure: she declares, she states at one point, “trembling uncontrollably”; shouting out her queer audience members, who are here in force, she proposes showing appreciation by adding a branded jockstrap to the merch stand.
It may well end the way these kind of solo careers end – the hostility towards former bandmate her previous colleague Jesy Nelson voiced within the song Natural at Disaster resolved, a media announcement to declare that the original group are back – but the reality that the entire audience appear word-perfect as they sing along to a record that only came out a few weeks prior makes you wonder. And should it occur, the closing Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Jade's individual musical path is not destined to fade into the domain of the barely recalled interim project.
Jade performs at the Manchester venue O2 Victoria Warehouse in the city of Manchester this evening and is traveling across the United Kingdom through October 23rd.
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