🔗 Share this article

With the exception of Harry Styles, the solo careers of ex-participants of televised singing competition groups seldom grip the public imagination. They usually follow certain rules – either an attempt at a more edgy urban music style, complete with at least a track including a cameo by an US hip-hop artist, or a lunge towards “grownup” mainstream-approved polished adult contemporary – and they usually amount to a barely recalled interim project, the sight and sound of someone gamely killing time prior to the unavoidable band comeback concerts.

An Idiosyncratic Path

This common scenario that makes the idiosyncratic path thus far followed by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall surprisingly refreshing. She’s certainly not above engaging in the typical activities that ex-reality TV group artists are known for undertaking, including emphatically stating that she's free from the media-trained constraints of the manufactured pop industry – judging by tonight’s crowd, 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 the track Gossip, her collaboration with electronic pair the group Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the songs she has chosen to create is pop music with a far more fascinating style than the norm.

A Superb Debut

She opened her solo account with the previous year's excellent Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jarring and disjointed mixture of big pop balladry, loud electronic instruments and samples 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 debut album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as her debut single: the track Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it’s also standard-issue disco pop, driven by precisely the Motown musical snippet the name implies; things are padded out with a cover of Madonna’s Frozen that transforms into a musical compilation of nineties club anthems, from 808’s Pacific 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 nearly discordant style of rhythmic music or are surrounded with cavernous echo. She dedicates Unconditional to her mum: it features a fabulous melody, early 80s syndrums, and crashing rock guitar allied to metallic pounding beats. IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the sound of early 00s electroclash, or rather the thrilling strain of early 00s pop that was strongly inspired by the electroclash genre, while the track Natural at Disaster begins like a keyboard-led emotional song before unexpectedly swerving into a dark computerized noise.

A Charming Performer

The woman at its centre is a hugely appealing, cheerily unvarnished figure: she is, she states at a certain moment, “trembling uncontrollably”; giving a shoutout to her queer audience members, who are here in force, she proposes showing appreciation by adding a official undergarment to the merchandise booth.

What Lies Ahead

It may well end the manner these kind of solo careers end – the enmity towards ex-group member Jesy Nelson expressed in the song Natural at Disaster patched up, a media announcement to declare that Little Mix are back – but the fact that the entire audience appear knowing every lyric as they sing along to an album that only came out a month ago causes one to ponder. And should it occur, the closing performance of Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Jade's individual musical path is unlikely to recede into the realms of the dimly remembered placeholder.

• Jade plays the O2 Victoria Warehouse in the city of Manchester tonight and is traveling across the United Kingdom through October 23rd.