Jade Review: Pop's Quirkiest Star Transcends Manufactured Past
Harry Styles aside, the solo careers of former members of TV talent show-manufactured bands seldom grip the audience's attention. They usually follow predictable patterns – either an attempt at a toughened-up R&B sound, complete with at least a track featuring a cameo by an US hip-hop artist, 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 band comeback concerts.
An Idiosyncratic Path
It’s a state of affairs that renders the unconventional route currently taken by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She definitely participates in doing the kind of things that ex-reality TV group artists are wont to do, among them loudly underlining 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 merchandise stall is a handheld cooling device emblazoned with the phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from the track Gossip, her musical partnership with electronic pair the group Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the songs she has chosen to create is pop of a noticeably more intriguing stripe than usual.
A Superb Debut
She opened her solo account with last year’s superb her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jarring and disjointed mixture of big pop balladry, loud electronic instruments and audio excerpts from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.
As the set on her initial individual concert series demonstrates, not every song on her debut album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as that: Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it's equally standard-issue disco pop, driven by precisely the Supremes sample its title suggests; things are padded out with a cover of Madonna’s Frozen that transforms into a medley of nineties club anthems, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.
More Intriguing Material
However, there exists additional material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. Headache melds an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with verses that present a nearly discordant brand of funk or are enfolded by cavernous echo. She dedicates the track Unconditional to her mum: it has a wonderful tune, early 80s syndrums, and powerful guitar riffs allied to clanging industrial drums. IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the musical aesthetic of early 00s electroclash, or rather the exciting variation of early 00s pop that was strongly inspired by the electroclash genre, while Natural at Disaster starts out like a keyboard-led emotional song before unexpectedly swerving into a dark computerized noise.
An Appealing Presence
The woman at its centre is a hugely appealing, cheerily unvarnished figure: she declares, she states at one point, “trembling uncontrollably”; shouting out her queer audience members, who are here in force, she proposes showing appreciation by including a branded jockstrap to the merch stand.
Future Possibilities
It could conclude the manner such individual artistic pursuits typically finish – the enmity towards former bandmate her previous colleague Jesy Nelson voiced within the song Natural at Disaster resolved, a media announcement to declare that Little Mix are reunited – but the fact that the entire audience appear word-perfect as they sing along to an album that was released just a month ago causes one to ponder. And should it occur, the final Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Jade's individual musical path is not destined to fade 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 through October 23rd.
