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Harry Styles aside, the solo careers of ex-participants of TV talent show-manufactured bands seldom grip the audience's attention. These efforts typically adhere to certain rules – either an attempt at a toughened-up R&B sound, complete with at least a track featuring a cameo by an American rapper, or a move into “grownup” mainstream-approved smooth pop-rock territory – and they usually amount to a dimly remembered placeholder, the sight and sound of someone gamely killing time prior to the unavoidable band comeback concerts.

A Unique Journey

This common scenario that makes the idiosyncratic path thus far followed by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall surprisingly refreshing. She definitely participates in doing the kind of things that former talent show band members are wont to do, including emphatically stating that she's free from the media-trained constraints of the factory-produced music business – based on tonight’s crowd, the top-selling product on the merchandise stall is a handheld cooling device displaying the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from Gossip, her musical partnership with dance duo Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the music she’s opted to make is pop of a noticeably more intriguing stripe than the norm.

An Impressive First Single

She launched her individual career with the previous year's excellent her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jolting and fragmented melange of big pop balladry, loud electronic instruments and audio excerpts from the classic track Puppet On A String by Sandie Shaw.

During the performance on her initial individual concert series demonstrates, not everything on her debut album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as her debut single: Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it’s also standard-issue disco pop, powered by precisely the Supremes sample the name implies; the show is extended with a cover of Madonna’s Frozen that devolves into a medley of 90s dance hits, from 808’s Pacific State to Set You Free by N-Trance.

More Intriguing Material

However, there exists additional where Angel Of My Dreams came from. Headache combines an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with verses that offer a nearly discordant brand of funk or are surrounded with deep reverberation. She dedicates Unconditional to her mum: it has a wonderful tune, early 80s syndrums, and crashing rock guitar allied to metallic pounding beats. The song IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the musical aesthetic of early 00s electroclash, or more accurately the thrilling strain of millennium-era popular music that was heavily influenced by electroclash, while Natural at Disaster starts out like a piano ballad before suddenly shifting into a dark computerized noise.

An Appealing Presence

The woman at its centre is a hugely appealing, cheerily unvarnished presence: she declares, she announces at a certain moment, “shaking like a shitting dog”; giving a shoutout to her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are present in large numbers, she proposes thanking them by adding a official undergarment to the merch stand.

What Lies Ahead

It could conclude the manner such individual artistic pursuits end – the hostility towards ex-group member her previous colleague Jesy Nelson expressed in Natural at Disaster resolved, a press conference to declare that Little Mix are back – but the reality that the entire audience appear knowing every lyric as they join in vocally to a record that was released just a few weeks prior makes you wonder. And even if it does, the closing Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Thirlwall’s solo career is not destined to fade into the domain of the dimly remembered placeholder.

• Jade plays the O2 Victoria Warehouse in the city of Manchester this evening and is traveling across the United Kingdom until 23 October.