🔗 Share this article

With the exception of Harry Styles, the solo careers of ex-participants of televised singing competition groups seldom grip the public imagination. They usually follow predictable patterns – often a pursuit at a more edgy urban music style, replete with at least one single featuring a cameo by an American rapper, or a move into mature Radio 2-friendly smooth pop-rock territory – and they typically become a barely recalled interim project, the visual and auditory experience 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 former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall surprisingly refreshing. She definitely participates in doing the kind of things that ex-reality TV group artists are wont to do, among them emphatically stating that she’s no longer subject the press-managed restrictions of the manufactured pop industry – based on tonight’s crowd, the most popular item on the merchandise stall is a handheld cooling device displaying the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from Gossip, her musical partnership with dance duo the group Confidence Man – but regardless, the songs she has chosen to create is pop of a noticeably more intriguing stripe than the norm.

An Impressive First Single

She launched her individual career with the previous year's excellent Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jolting and fragmented mixture of grand emotional pop songs, loud electronic instruments and samples from the classic track Puppet On A String by Sandie Shaw.

During the performance on her first solo tour proves, not every song on her debut 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 equally typical dancefloor-oriented pop, powered by precisely the Supremes sample the name implies; the show is extended with a interpretation of the Madonna classic Frozen that transforms into a musical compilation of 90s dance hits, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.

Additional Fascinating Content

But there’s also more material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. The song Headache melds an Abba-esque chorus with verses that present a borderline atonal style of rhythmic music or are enfolded by cavernous echo. She dedicates the track Unconditional to her mum: it features a fabulous melody, early 80s syndrums, and crashing rock guitar allied to clanging industrial drums. The song IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the musical aesthetic of early 00s electroclash, or more accurately the exciting variation of millennium-era popular music that was strongly inspired by electroclash, while Natural at Disaster begins like a piano ballad before suddenly shifting into a dark computerized noise.

A Charming Performer

The artist on stage is a hugely appealing, delightfully authentic presence: she declares, she states at a certain moment, “trembling uncontrollably”; giving a shoutout to her queer audience members, who are here in force, she proposes thanking them by adding a official undergarment to the merch stand.

What Lies Ahead

It may well end the manner these kind of solo careers end – the hostility towards ex-group member her previous colleague Jesy Nelson voiced within the song Natural at Disaster patched up, a press conference to declare that the original group are back – but the reality that the entire audience appear word-perfect as they sing along to an album that was released just a few weeks prior causes one to ponder. And should it occur, the final performance of Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Jade's individual musical path is not destined to fade into the realms of the barely recalled interim project.

• Jade performs at the Manchester venue O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester tonight and is traveling across the United Kingdom until 23 October.