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With the exception of Harry Styles, the solo careers of former members of televised singing competition groups seldom grip the public imagination. These efforts typically adhere to predictable patterns – either an attempt at a more edgy urban music style, replete with at least one single featuring 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 visual and auditory experience of someone enthusiastically passing the years prior to the unavoidable reunion tour.

An Idiosyncratic Path

It’s a state of affairs that makes the idiosyncratic path currently taken by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall surprisingly refreshing. She definitely participates in doing the kind of things that former talent show band members are known for undertaking, among them emphatically stating that she’s no longer subject the media-trained constraints of the factory-produced music business – judging by the audience this evening, the top-selling product on the official goods stand is a handheld cooling device emblazoned with the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from the track Gossip, her musical partnership with dance duo Confidence Man – but regardless, the music she’s opted to make is pop music with a far more fascinating style than the norm.

A Superb Debut

She opened her solo account with the previous year's excellent her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jarring and disjointed melange 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 every song on her debut album her album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as her debut single: Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it's equally typical dancefloor-oriented pop, powered by precisely the Supremes sample the name implies; the show is extended with a interpretation of Madonna’s Frozen that devolves into a musical compilation of 90s dance hits, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to Set You Free by N-Trance.

More Intriguing Material

However, there exists additional material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. The song Headache melds an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with song sections that offer a borderline atonal style of rhythmic music or are surrounded with cavernous echo. She dedicates the track Unconditional to her mum: it has a wonderful tune, eighties-style electronic percussion, and powerful guitar riffs combined with clanging industrial drums. The song IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the musical aesthetic of early 00s electroclash, or rather the exciting variation of early 00s pop that was heavily influenced by electroclash, while the track Natural at Disaster begins like a piano ballad before suddenly shifting into a dark computerized noise.

A Charming Performer

The artist on stage is a immensely likable, cheerily unvarnished presence: she is, she states at one point, “trembling uncontrollably”; giving a shoutout to her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are here in force, she suggests thanking them by including a official undergarment to the merchandise booth.

Future Possibilities

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 the original group are reunited – but the reality that every attendee seem to be knowing every lyric as they sing along to a record that only came out a month ago causes one to ponder. And even if it does, the final Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Jade's individual musical path is unlikely to recede into the domain of the dimly remembered placeholder.

• Jade plays the Manchester venue O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester this evening and is touring the UK through October 23rd.