🔗 Share this article

Harry Styles aside, individual artistic journeys of ex-participants of TV talent show-manufactured bands seldom grip the audience's attention. These efforts typically adhere to certain rules – often a pursuit at a more edgy urban music style, complete with at least one single featuring a cameo by an US hip-hop artist, or a lunge towards mature Radio 2-friendly polished adult contemporary – and they typically become a barely recalled interim project, 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 thus far followed by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall surprisingly refreshing. She’s certainly not above doing the kind of things that ex-reality TV group artists are known for undertaking, including emphatically stating that she’s no longer subject the press-managed restrictions of the factory-produced music business – judging by tonight’s crowd, the top-selling product on the merchandise stall is a handheld cooling device emblazoned with the phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from Gossip, her musical partnership with electronic pair Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the songs she has chosen to create is pop of a noticeably more intriguing stripe than usual.

An Impressive First Single

She opened her solo account with the previous year's excellent her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jolting and fragmented mixture of grand emotional pop songs, loud electronic instruments and audio excerpts from the classic track Puppet On A String by Sandie Shaw.

During the performance on her first solo tour demonstrates, not every song on her debut album her album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as her debut single: the track Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it’s also standard-issue disco pop, powered by precisely the Supremes sample the name implies; things are padded out with a interpretation of Madonna’s Frozen that devolves into a musical compilation of 90s dance hits, from 808’s Pacific State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.

More Intriguing Material

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 song sections that present a borderline atonal brand of funk or are enfolded by cavernous echo. She offers Unconditional to her mum: it features a wonderful tune, early 80s syndrums, and crashing rock guitar allied to metallic pounding beats. IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the musical aesthetic 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 keyboard-led emotional song before suddenly shifting into a malevolent electronic grind.

An Appealing Presence

The woman at its centre is a hugely appealing, cheerily unvarnished presence: she declares, she announces at one point, “shaking like a shitting dog”; giving a shoutout to her queer audience members, who are here in force, she proposes thanking them by including a official undergarment to the merch stand.

Future Possibilities

It could conclude the manner such individual artistic pursuits end – the enmity towards former bandmate Jesy Nelson expressed in Natural at Disaster resolved, a media announcement to declare that the original group are back – but the reality that the entire audience seem to be word-perfect as they sing along to a record that only came out a few weeks prior causes one to ponder. And even if it does, the final performance of Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Jade's individual musical path is unlikely to recede into the domain of the dimly remembered placeholder.

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