Jade Review: Pop's Most Unique Artist Transcends Manufactured Past
With the exception of Harry Styles, individual artistic journeys of former members of televised singing competition groups rarely capture the public imagination. They usually follow predictable patterns – either an attempt at a more edgy urban music style, complete with at least a track featuring a cameo by an US hip-hop artist, or a lunge towards “grownup” mainstream-approved polished adult contemporary – and they typically become a dimly remembered placeholder, the sight and sound of someone enthusiastically passing the years before the inevitable band comeback concerts.
A Unique Journey
It’s a state of affairs that makes the idiosyncratic path thus far followed by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall surprisingly refreshing. She definitely participates in doing the kind of things that ex-reality TV group artists are known for undertaking, 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 top-selling product on the official goods stand is a handheld cooling device displaying the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from the track Gossip, her collaboration with electronic pair Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the music she’s opted to make is pop of a noticeably more intriguing stripe than the norm.
An Impressive First Single
She opened her solo account with last year’s superb her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jarring and fragmented mixture of grand emotional pop songs, noisy synthesisers and audio excerpts from the classic track Puppet On A String by Sandie Shaw.
As the set on her initial individual concert series 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 insanely catchy, but it’s also typical dancefloor-oriented pop, driven by exactly the Supremes sample the name implies; the show is extended with a interpretation of Madonna’s Frozen that transforms into a musical compilation of 90s dance hits, from 808’s Pacific 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 offer a borderline atonal brand of funk or are enfolded by deep reverberation. She offers Unconditional to her mum: it has a wonderful tune, early 80s syndrums, and crashing rock guitar combined with clanging industrial drums. The song IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the musical aesthetic of early 00s electroclash, or more accurately the exciting variation of early 00s pop that was strongly inspired by the electroclash genre, while Natural at Disaster starts out like a piano ballad before unexpectedly swerving into a malevolent electronic grind.
An Appealing Presence
The artist on stage is a hugely appealing, cheerily unvarnished presence: she is, she states at one point, “trembling uncontrollably”; shouting out her queer audience members, who are here in force, she suggests showing appreciation by including a branded jockstrap to the merch stand.
What Lies Ahead
It could conclude 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 press conference to declare that the original group are reunited – but the fact that the entire audience appear word-perfect as they sing along to an album that only came out a month ago causes one to ponder. And should it occur, the closing Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Thirlwall’s solo career is unlikely to recede into the domain of the barely recalled interim project.
Jade plays the Manchester venue O2 Victoria Warehouse in the city of Manchester tonight and is touring the UK until 23 October.
