Jade Thirlwall Review: Pop's Most Unique Artist Rises Above TV-Created Origins
With the exception of Harry Styles, the solo careers of ex-participants of televised singing competition groups seldom grip the audience's attention. They usually follow predictable patterns – either an attempt at a more edgy urban music style, replete with at least one single including a cameo 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 visual and auditory experience of someone enthusiastically passing the years prior to the unavoidable 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’s certainly not above engaging in the typical activities 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 – 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 song line 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.
An Impressive First Single
She launched her individual career with last year’s superb her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jarring and disjointed mixture of grand emotional pop songs, noisy synthesisers and audio excerpts from the classic track Puppet On A String by Sandie Shaw.
As the set on her first solo tour demonstrates, not every song on her first full-length release That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as that: Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it’s also standard-issue disco pop, driven by exactly the Supremes sample the name implies; things are padded out with a interpretation of Madonna’s Frozen that devolves into a medley of 90s dance hits, from 808’s Pacific State to Set You Free by N-Trance.
More Intriguing Material
However, there exists additional where Angel Of My Dreams came from. Headache combines an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with song sections that offer a borderline atonal brand of funk or are enfolded by cavernous echo. She dedicates Unconditional to her mother: it features a wonderful tune, eighties-style electronic percussion, and powerful guitar riffs combined with metallic pounding beats. IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the musical aesthetic of early 00s electroclash, or more accurately the thrilling strain 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 dark computerized noise.
A Charming Performer
The artist on stage is a immensely likable, delightfully authentic figure: she is, she announces at one point, “shaking like a shitting dog”; shouting out her queer audience members, who are here in force, she suggests showing appreciation by including a branded jockstrap to the merchandise booth.
Future Possibilities
It could conclude the way these kind of solo careers end – the hostility towards ex-group member her previous colleague Jesy Nelson expressed in Natural at Disaster resolved, a media announcement to declare that Little Mix are back – but the fact that every attendee seem to be word-perfect as they join in vocally to a record that only came out a month ago makes you wonder. And should it occur, the final Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Thirlwall’s solo career is unlikely to recede into the domain of the dimly remembered placeholder.
Jade plays the O2 Victoria Warehouse in the city of Manchester tonight and is touring the UK through October 23rd.
