🔗 Share this article Jade Thirlwall Review: The Music World's Quirkiest Star Rises Above TV-Created Origins With the exception of Harry Styles, the solo careers of ex-participants of TV talent show-manufactured bands rarely capture the audience's attention. These efforts typically adhere to certain rules – either an attempt at a toughened-up R&B sound, replete with at least one single featuring a guest appearance by an American rapper, or a move into “grownup” Radio 2-friendly polished adult contemporary – and they usually amount to a barely recalled interim project, the sight and sound of someone enthusiastically passing the years prior to the unavoidable reunion tour. An Idiosyncratic Path It’s a state of affairs that renders the unconventional route thus far followed by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She’s certainly not above doing the kind of things that ex-reality TV group artists are wont to do, including emphatically stating that she's free from the press-managed restrictions 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 legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from Gossip, her collaboration with electronic pair Confidence Man – but regardless, the music she’s opted to make is pop of a noticeably more intriguing stripe than the norm. A Superb Debut She opened her solo account with last year’s superb Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jarring and disjointed mixture of grand emotional pop songs, noisy synthesisers and audio excerpts from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String. During the performance on her first solo tour proves, not everything on her debut album her album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as her debut single: the track Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it's equally standard-issue disco pop, powered by exactly the Motown musical snippet its title suggests; the show is extended with a cover of the Madonna classic Frozen that transforms into a medley of 90s dance hits, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to Set You Free by N-Trance. More Intriguing Material However, there exists additional material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. Headache melds an Abba-esque chorus with verses that offer a borderline atonal style of rhythmic music or are enfolded by cavernous echo. She dedicates the track Unconditional to her mum: it features a wonderful tune, eighties-style electronic percussion, and crashing rock guitar combined with clanging industrial drums. IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the sound of 2000s electronic punk movement, 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 dark computerized noise. An Appealing Presence The artist on stage is a immensely likable, delightfully authentic presence: she declares, she announces at a certain moment, “shaking like a shitting dog”; giving a shoutout to her queer audience members, who are here in force, she suggests showing appreciation by adding a branded jockstrap to the merchandise booth. 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 Natural at Disaster resolved, a media announcement to announce that the original group are reunited – but the reality that every attendee seem to be word-perfect as they join in vocally to an album that only came out a few weeks prior causes one to ponder. And even if it does, 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 plays the Manchester venue O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester this evening and is traveling across the United Kingdom through October 23rd.