Jade Thirlwall Review: Pop's Quirkiest Star Rises Above Manufactured Past

With the exception of Harry Styles, the solo careers of former members of TV talent show-manufactured bands seldom grip the audience's attention. These efforts typically adhere to certain rules – either an attempt at a more edgy urban music style, replete with at least one single including a guest appearance by an American rapper, or a move into “grownup” mainstream-approved polished adult contemporary – and they typically become a barely recalled interim project, the sight and sound of someone enthusiastically passing the years before the inevitable reunion tour.

An Idiosyncratic Path

It’s a state of affairs that renders the unconventional route thus far followed by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She’s certainly not above engaging in the typical activities that former talent show band members are wont to do, among them loudly underlining that she’s no longer subject the media-trained constraints of the manufactured pop industry – judging by tonight’s crowd, the top-selling product on the official goods stand is a fan emblazoned with the phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from Gossip, her musical partnership with electronic pair the group 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, jarring and fragmented melange of grand emotional pop songs, noisy synthesisers and samples from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

During the performance on her first solo tour demonstrates, not everything on her first full-length release That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as that: the track Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it's equally standard-issue disco pop, driven by precisely the Motown musical snippet its title suggests; things are padded out with a cover of the Madonna classic Frozen that devolves into a medley 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 combines an Abba-esque chorus with verses that present a borderline atonal style of rhythmic music or are surrounded with deep reverberation. She dedicates Unconditional to her mother: it has a wonderful tune, eighties-style electronic percussion, and powerful guitar riffs allied to metallic pounding beats. IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates 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 Natural at Disaster starts out like a piano ballad before unexpectedly swerving into a dark computerized noise.

An Appealing Presence

The woman at its centre is a hugely appealing, delightfully authentic figure: she is, she announces at one point, “trembling uncontrollably”; shouting out her queer audience members, who are here in force, she suggests thanking them by including a branded jockstrap to the merchandise booth.

Future Possibilities

It could conclude the manner such individual artistic pursuits typically finish – the hostility towards ex-group member her previous colleague Jesy Nelson voiced within Natural at Disaster patched up, a media announcement to declare that Little Mix are reunited – but the fact that every attendee seem to be word-perfect as they sing along to a record that only came out a month ago causes one to ponder. And should it occur, the final performance of Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Jade's individual musical path is unlikely to recede into the realms of the dimly remembered placeholder.

• Jade plays the O2 Victoria Warehouse in the city of Manchester tonight and is touring the UK until 23 October.