🔗 Share this article Jade Review: The Music World's Quirkiest Artist Transcends Manufactured Origins With the exception of Harry Styles, individual artistic journeys of former members of TV talent show-manufactured bands rarely capture the audience's attention. These efforts typically adhere to certain rules – often a pursuit at a toughened-up R&B sound, complete with at least a track including a guest appearance by an US hip-hop artist, or a move into mature Radio 2-friendly smooth pop-rock territory – 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. A Unique Journey It’s a state of affairs that makes the idiosyncratic path currently taken by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She’s certainly not above doing the kind of things that ex-reality TV group artists are known for undertaking, among them emphatically stating that she's free from 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 handheld cooling device emblazoned with the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from Gossip, her musical partnership with electronic pair the group Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the music she’s opted to make is pop of a noticeably more intriguing stripe than usual. A Superb Debut She opened her solo account with the previous year's excellent Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jolting and fragmented mixture of grand emotional pop songs, loud electronic instruments and audio excerpts from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String. As the set on her first solo tour demonstrates, 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 extremely memorable, but it’s also standard-issue disco pop, driven by exactly the Supremes sample the name implies; the show is extended with a interpretation of Madonna’s Frozen that devolves into a musical compilation of nineties club anthems, from 808’s Pacific State to Set You Free by N-Trance. More Intriguing Material But there’s also more 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 nearly discordant brand of funk or are enfolded by cavernous echo. She dedicates the track Unconditional to her mother: it features a wonderful tune, early 80s syndrums, and powerful guitar riffs allied to metallic pounding beats. The song IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the sound of 2000s electronic punk movement, or more accurately the exciting variation of millennium-era popular music that was heavily influenced 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 woman at its centre is a hugely appealing, delightfully authentic presence: she declares, she states at one point, “trembling uncontrollably”; giving a shoutout to her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are here in force, she proposes thanking them by adding a branded jockstrap to the merch stand. What Lies Ahead It could conclude the manner these kind of solo careers typically finish – the enmity towards former bandmate 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 seem to be knowing every lyric as they sing along to an album that only came out a few weeks prior makes you wonder. And even if it does, the final performance of Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Jade's individual musical path is unlikely to recede into the domain of the barely recalled interim project. Jade plays the Manchester venue O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester this evening and is touring the UK until 23 October.