JADE - THAT'S SHOWBIZ BABY!

From the first juddering seconds of 'Angel of My Dreams' it's obvious JADE has no intention of offering the usual polite, risk-averse introduction to her solo career; instead she barrels in with something stitched together like a mad cabaret act, flipping through styles like a magician riffling a deck of cards, daring us to keep up, daring us to roll our eyes and miss the gag, and in the process making it very clear that she knows exactly what she's doing. After a decade of being one-quarter-slash-third of Britain's most successful girl group, she has absolutely no interest in behaving like the dutiful alumna with the steady mid-tempo ballad and the carefully A&R-ed guest spot – she's decided her first statement has to be part spectacle, part provocation, part confession, and all hers.

The result is an album that delights in its own contradictions. It's messy but exacting, camp but tender, wry but emotionally direct. JADE has described her approach as "Frankenstein"-ing songs together – "Frankenstein pop", if you like – and it fits: tracks veer between modes, sewn together at unlikely angles, switching register just as they seem to be settling. In less capable hands, the whole thing would dissolve into novelty, but the chaos is held in place by a centre of gravity that is pure personality. This is music that thrives on audacity, a kind of knowing, distinctly British audacity cheek with an instinct to undercut drama with humour and to let a punchline land right in the middle of a heart-on-sleeve confession.

What's most striking is how those contradictions play out across the record. One song will be a straight-faced disco fantasia, all rhapsodic synths and breathless exhortations. The next will be an abrasive tangle of distorted beats, where she casts herself as the problem in the relationship. A track that begins like a bawdy Western skit – 'Midnight Cowboy', complete with a cheeky scene-setting intro from Ncuti Gatwa – quickly mutates into a ribald club anthem. Another paints longing in oddly grotesque imagery, as if to admit insecurity by making it cartoonishly vivid. Rather than collapsing under the weight of ideas, the album feeds off their friction. Each jarring left turn is its own kind of punchline, and JADE knows exactly when to let the listener in on the joke.