Jade Review: Pop's Quirkiest Artist Rises Above Manufactured Past
Harry Styles aside, individual artistic journeys of former members of TV talent show-manufactured bands seldom grip the audience's attention. They usually follow predictable patterns – often a pursuit at a more edgy urban music style, complete with at least a track featuring a cameo by an US hip-hop artist, or a move into “grownup” Radio 2-friendly polished adult contemporary – and they usually amount to a dimly remembered placeholder, 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 makes the idiosyncratic path currently taken by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She definitely participates in engaging in the typical activities that ex-reality TV group artists are wont to do, including 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 merchandise stall is a fan emblazoned with the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from Gossip, her collaboration with dance duo Confidence Man – but regardless, the songs she has chosen to create is pop music with a far more fascinating style than the norm.
An Impressive First Single
She opened her solo account with last year’s superb Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jolting and disjointed mixture of grand emotional pop songs, noisy synthesisers and audio excerpts from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.
As the set on her initial individual concert series demonstrates, not everything on her debut album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as her debut single: Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it's equally typical dancefloor-oriented pop, driven by exactly the Motown musical snippet its title suggests; things are padded out with a interpretation of Madonna’s Frozen that transforms into a musical compilation of 90s dance hits, from 808’s Pacific State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.
More Intriguing Material
However, there exists additional material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. The song Headache melds an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with song sections that offer a borderline atonal style of rhythmic music or are enfolded by cavernous echo. She dedicates Unconditional to her mother: it features a fabulous melody, eighties-style electronic percussion, and powerful guitar riffs combined with clanging industrial drums. IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the sound of early 00s electroclash, or more accurately the exciting variation of millennium-era popular music that was heavily influenced by the electroclash genre, while the track Natural at Disaster begins like a keyboard-led emotional song 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, “shaking like a shitting dog”; giving a shoutout to her queer audience members, who are here in force, she suggests showing appreciation by including a official undergarment to the merchandise booth.
What Lies Ahead
It could conclude the manner these kind of solo careers end – the enmity towards former bandmate her previous colleague Jesy Nelson expressed in Natural at Disaster patched up, a press conference to declare that Little Mix are reunited – but the reality 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 even if it does, the closing performance of Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Jade's individual musical path is unlikely to recede into the realms of the dimly remembered placeholder.
Jade performs at the Manchester venue O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester tonight and is touring the UK through October 23rd.
