🔗 Share this article

With the exception of Harry Styles, the solo careers of ex-participants of TV talent show-manufactured bands rarely capture the audience's attention. They usually follow certain rules – either an attempt at a toughened-up R&B sound, replete with at least one single featuring a guest appearance by an US hip-hop artist, or a move into “grownup” mainstream-approved polished adult contemporary – and they usually amount to a barely recalled interim project, the sight and sound of someone enthusiastically passing the years before the inevitable band comeback concerts.

A Unique Journey

This common scenario that makes the idiosyncratic path currently taken by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She definitely participates in doing the kind of things that former talent show band members are known for undertaking, among them emphatically stating that she’s no longer subject the media-trained constraints of the factory-produced music business – based on the audience this evening, the most popular item on the official goods stand is a handheld cooling device emblazoned with the phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from Gossip, her collaboration with electronic pair Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the songs she has chosen to create is pop music with a far more fascinating style than the norm.

An Impressive First Single

She launched her individual career with the previous year's excellent her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jarring and fragmented mixture of big pop balladry, loud electronic instruments and audio excerpts from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

During the performance on her initial individual concert series 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 insanely catchy, but it’s also typical dancefloor-oriented pop, powered by precisely the Motown musical snippet the name implies; things are padded out with a cover of the Madonna classic Frozen that transforms into a musical compilation of nineties club anthems, from 808’s Pacific State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.

More Intriguing Material

But there’s also more where Angel Of My Dreams came from. Headache combines an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with verses that present a nearly discordant brand of funk or are surrounded with deep reverberation. She dedicates the track Unconditional to her mum: it has a wonderful tune, eighties-style electronic percussion, and powerful guitar riffs allied to clanging industrial drums. IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the musical aesthetic of 2000s electronic punk movement, or more accurately the thrilling strain of early 00s pop that was heavily influenced by electroclash, while Natural at Disaster starts out like a keyboard-led emotional song before unexpectedly swerving into a malevolent electronic grind.

An Appealing Presence

The woman at its centre is a immensely likable, delightfully authentic figure: she is, she announces at a certain moment, “trembling uncontrollably”; shouting out her queer audience members, who are here in force, she proposes showing appreciation by adding a branded jockstrap to the merchandise booth.

Future Possibilities

It may well end the way these kind of solo careers end – the enmity towards ex-group member her previous colleague Jesy Nelson voiced within the song Natural at Disaster patched up, a press conference to announce that the original group are reunited – but the fact that the entire audience appear knowing every lyric as they join in vocally to a record that only came out a month ago causes one to ponder. And even if it does, the closing 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 O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester tonight and is traveling across the United Kingdom until 23 October.