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With the exception of Harry Styles, individual artistic journeys of ex-participants of televised singing competition groups seldom grip the audience's attention. These efforts typically adhere to predictable patterns – often a pursuit at a more edgy urban music style, replete with at least one single including a cameo by an US hip-hop artist, or a lunge towards mature Radio 2-friendly polished adult contemporary – and they typically become a barely recalled interim project, the sight and sound of someone enthusiastically passing the years prior to the unavoidable reunion tour.

An Idiosyncratic Path

This common scenario that makes the idiosyncratic path thus far followed by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She definitely participates in engaging in the typical activities that former talent show band members are known for undertaking, among them emphatically stating that she's free from the media-trained constraints of the factory-produced music business – judging by tonight’s crowd, the top-selling product on the official goods stand is a fan emblazoned with the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from the track Gossip, her musical partnership with electronic pair the group Confidence Man – but regardless, the music she’s opted to make is pop music with a far more fascinating style than usual.

An Impressive First Single

She launched her individual career with last year’s superb her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jarring and disjointed melange of big pop balladry, noisy synthesisers and samples from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

During the performance on her initial individual concert series proves, not every song on her first full-length release her 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, driven by exactly the Supremes sample its title suggests; things are padded out with a interpretation of Madonna’s Frozen that devolves into a medley of 90s dance hits, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to Set You Free by N-Trance.

Additional Fascinating Content

However, there exists additional where Angel Of My Dreams came from. Headache melds an Abba-esque chorus with verses that offer a borderline atonal brand of funk or are surrounded with cavernous echo. She offers Unconditional to her mother: it has a wonderful tune, early 80s syndrums, and powerful guitar riffs combined with metallic pounding beats. The song IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the sound of early 00s electroclash, or more accurately the exciting variation of early 00s pop that was heavily influenced by the electroclash genre, while Natural at Disaster starts out like a keyboard-led emotional song before unexpectedly swerving into a dark computerized noise.

A Charming Performer

The woman at its centre is a immensely likable, delightfully authentic figure: she is, she announces at one point, “shaking like a shitting dog”; giving a shoutout to her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are present in large numbers, she suggests showing appreciation by including a official undergarment to the merch stand.

What Lies Ahead

It may well end the way such individual artistic pursuits typically finish – the hostility towards ex-group member her previous colleague Jesy Nelson expressed in the song Natural at Disaster patched up, a media announcement to announce that Little Mix are back – but the fact that every attendee seem to be knowing every lyric as they join in vocally to a record that only came out a month ago causes one to ponder. And even if it does, the final performance of Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Thirlwall’s solo career is not destined to fade into the realms of the barely recalled interim project.

• Jade performs at the O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester this evening and is touring the UK until 23 October.