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Harry Styles aside, individual artistic journeys of former members 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 American rapper, or a move into mature Radio 2-friendly smooth pop-rock territory – and they typically become a barely recalled interim project, the sight and sound of someone gamely killing time prior to the unavoidable band comeback concerts.

An Idiosyncratic Path

It’s a state of affairs that renders the unconventional route currently taken by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She definitely participates in doing the kind of things that ex-reality TV group artists are wont to do, among them emphatically stating that she's free from the press-managed restrictions of the factory-produced music business – based on tonight’s crowd, the most popular item on the official goods stand is a fan emblazoned with the phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from Gossip, her musical partnership 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 her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jolting and fragmented mixture of big pop balladry, loud electronic instruments and audio excerpts from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

During the performance on her first solo tour demonstrates, not everything 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, powered by exactly the Motown musical snippet its title suggests; things are padded out with a interpretation of Madonna’s Frozen that devolves into a musical compilation of nineties club anthems, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.

Additional Fascinating Content

But there’s also more material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. The song Headache combines an Abba-esque chorus with verses that offer a borderline atonal style of rhythmic music or are enfolded by cavernous echo. She offers the track Unconditional to her mum: it has a fabulous melody, eighties-style electronic percussion, and crashing rock guitar allied to clanging industrial drums. The song IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates 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 malevolent electronic grind.

A Charming Performer

The artist on stage is a immensely likable, cheerily unvarnished figure: she declares, she states at a certain moment, “trembling uncontrollably”; shouting out her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are present in large numbers, she proposes thanking them by including a official undergarment to the merchandise booth.

What Lies Ahead

It could conclude the way such individual artistic pursuits end – the hostility towards former bandmate her previous colleague Jesy Nelson voiced within Natural at Disaster resolved, a press conference to announce that Little Mix are reunited – but the reality that the entire audience appear 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 emphasizes that Thirlwall’s solo career is not destined to fade into the realms of the barely recalled interim project.

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