Jade Review: Pop's Most Unique Artist Rises Above Manufactured Past
Harry Styles aside, the solo careers of former members of televised singing competition groups seldom grip the audience's attention. These efforts typically adhere to certain rules – often a pursuit at a more edgy urban music style, replete with at least a track featuring a guest appearance by an US hip-hop artist, or a move into mature Radio 2-friendly polished adult contemporary – and they usually amount to a dimly remembered placeholder, the visual and auditory experience of someone gamely killing time before the inevitable band comeback concerts.
An Idiosyncratic Path
This common scenario that renders the unconventional route currently taken by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall surprisingly refreshing. She’s certainly not above doing the kind of things that ex-reality TV group artists are known for undertaking, including emphatically stating that she’s no longer subject the media-trained constraints of the manufactured pop industry – based on the audience this evening, the top-selling product on the official goods stand is a fan emblazoned with the phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from Gossip, her collaboration with dance duo the group 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, jarring and disjointed mixture of big pop balladry, loud electronic instruments and samples from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.
As the set on her first solo tour proves, not everything on her debut album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as that: Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it's equally typical dancefloor-oriented pop, powered by exactly the Motown musical snippet the name implies; the show is extended with a cover of Madonna’s Frozen that transforms into a medley of nineties club anthems, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.
More Intriguing Material
But there’s also more where Angel Of My Dreams came from. The song Headache melds an Abba-esque chorus with verses that present a nearly discordant style of rhythmic music or are enfolded by deep reverberation. She offers the track Unconditional to her mum: it features a fabulous melody, early 80s syndrums, and powerful guitar riffs combined with metallic pounding beats. The song IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the musical aesthetic of 2000s electronic punk movement, or more accurately the thrilling strain of millennium-era popular music 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.
An Appealing Presence
The artist on stage is a hugely appealing, delightfully authentic figure: she is, she announces at a certain moment, “trembling uncontrollably”; giving a shoutout to her queer audience members, who are present in large numbers, she suggests showing appreciation by including a branded jockstrap to the merchandise booth.
Future Possibilities
It could conclude the manner such individual artistic pursuits typically finish – the enmity towards ex-group member her previous colleague Jesy Nelson expressed in Natural at Disaster patched up, a press conference to announce that Little Mix are back – but the reality that every attendee seem to be knowing every lyric as they sing along to a record that was released just a few weeks prior causes one to ponder. And even if it does, the final performance of Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Jade's individual musical path is unlikely to recede into the domain of the dimly remembered placeholder.
Jade performs at the O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester this evening and is traveling across the United Kingdom through October 23rd.
