Jade Review: Pop's Quirkiest Star Rises Above Manufactured Past
With the exception of Harry Styles, individual artistic journeys of ex-participants of televised singing competition groups seldom grip the audience's attention. These efforts typically adhere to predictable patterns – either an attempt at a more edgy urban music style, replete with at least one single featuring a cameo by an American rapper, or a move into “grownup” Radio 2-friendly smooth pop-rock territory – and they typically become a barely recalled interim project, the sight and sound of someone gamely killing time before the inevitable band comeback concerts.
A Unique Journey
It’s a state of affairs that renders the unconventional route currently taken 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, including emphatically stating that she's free from the press-managed restrictions of the manufactured pop industry – judging by the audience this evening, the most popular item on the merchandise stall is a fan displaying the phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from Gossip, her collaboration with electronic pair 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 launched her individual career with last year’s superb Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jarring and disjointed mixture of grand emotional pop songs, noisy synthesisers and samples from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.
During the performance on her initial individual concert series demonstrates, not everything on her debut album her album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as that: the track Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it’s also typical dancefloor-oriented pop, driven by exactly the Motown musical snippet its title suggests; things are padded out with a cover of the Madonna classic Frozen that devolves into a musical compilation of 90s dance hits, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to Set You Free by N-Trance.
Additional Fascinating Content
But there’s also more material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. The song Headache combines an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with verses that present a borderline atonal style of rhythmic music or are surrounded with cavernous echo. She offers the track Unconditional to her mother: it features a wonderful tune, early 80s syndrums, and powerful guitar riffs allied to metallic pounding beats. IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the sound of early 00s electroclash, or more accurately the exciting variation of early 00s pop that was heavily influenced by electroclash, while Natural at Disaster begins like a piano ballad before unexpectedly swerving into a malevolent electronic grind.
An Appealing Presence
The artist on stage is a immensely likable, cheerily unvarnished figure: she is, she announces at one point, “trembling uncontrollably”; shouting out her queer audience members, who are present in large numbers, she proposes showing appreciation by including a branded jockstrap to the merch stand.
What Lies Ahead
It may well end the manner these kind of solo careers typically finish – the hostility towards ex-group member 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 the entire audience appear word-perfect as they join in vocally to an album that only came out a month ago makes you wonder. And should it occur, the closing Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Jade's individual musical path is unlikely to recede into the realms of the barely recalled interim project.
Jade performs at the O2 Victoria Warehouse in the city of Manchester tonight and is traveling across the United Kingdom until 23 October.
