Jade Thirlwall Review: Pop's Quirkiest Artist Rises Above Manufactured Origins
Harry Styles aside, the solo careers of former members of televised singing competition groups rarely capture the audience's attention. They usually follow certain rules – often a pursuit at a toughened-up R&B sound, replete with at least one single featuring a cameo by an US hip-hop artist, or a move into mature Radio 2-friendly polished adult contemporary – and they usually amount to a barely recalled interim project, the visual and auditory experience of someone enthusiastically passing the years before the inevitable band comeback concerts.
An Idiosyncratic Path
This common scenario that makes the idiosyncratic path thus far followed by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She’s certainly not above doing the kind of things that ex-reality TV group artists are known for undertaking, among them loudly underlining that she’s no longer subject the press-managed restrictions of the factory-produced music business – judging by the audience this evening, the most popular item on the official goods stand is a fan emblazoned with the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from Gossip, her collaboration with dance duo the group Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the music she’s opted to make is pop music with a far more fascinating style than usual.
A Superb Debut
She opened her solo account with the previous year's excellent her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jarring and disjointed melange of grand emotional pop songs, loud electronic instruments and samples from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.
During the performance on her first solo tour demonstrates, not everything on her debut album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as her debut single: the track Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it’s also standard-issue disco pop, powered by precisely the Motown musical snippet its title suggests; the show is extended with a cover of the Madonna classic Frozen that devolves into a medley of nineties club anthems, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to Set You Free by N-Trance.
Additional Fascinating Content
However, there exists additional material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. Headache combines an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with verses that present a borderline atonal brand of funk or are surrounded with cavernous echo. She offers Unconditional to her mother: it features a wonderful tune, eighties-style electronic percussion, and crashing rock guitar allied to metallic pounding beats. The song IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the musical aesthetic of early 00s electroclash, or rather the exciting variation of millennium-era popular music that was heavily influenced by the electroclash genre, while Natural at Disaster begins like a keyboard-led emotional song before suddenly shifting into a malevolent electronic grind.
A Charming Performer
The woman at its centre is a immensely likable, delightfully authentic figure: she is, she announces at one point, “trembling uncontrollably”; giving a shoutout to her queer audience members, who are present in large numbers, she suggests showing appreciation by adding a official undergarment to the merchandise booth.
What Lies Ahead
It could conclude the way these kind of solo careers typically finish – the enmity towards former bandmate her previous colleague Jesy Nelson expressed in the song Natural at Disaster resolved, a press conference to declare that the original group are back – but the fact that every attendee appear word-perfect as they join in vocally to a record that only came out a month ago causes one to ponder. And should it occur, the closing Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Thirlwall’s solo career is not destined to fade into the domain of the barely recalled interim project.
Jade plays the O2 Victoria Warehouse in the city of Manchester this evening and is touring the UK until 23 October.
