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Harry Styles aside, individual artistic journeys of former members of televised singing competition groups seldom grip the audience's attention. They usually follow certain rules – often a pursuit at a toughened-up R&B sound, complete with at least one single featuring a guest appearance by an US hip-hop artist, or a lunge towards mature Radio 2-friendly smooth pop-rock territory – and they typically become a dimly remembered placeholder, the visual and auditory experience of someone gamely killing time before the inevitable band comeback concerts.

A Unique Journey

This common scenario that makes the idiosyncratic path currently taken by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She’s certainly not above engaging in the typical activities that ex-reality TV group artists are wont to do, including emphatically stating that she's free from the media-trained constraints of the manufactured pop industry – based on tonight’s crowd, the most popular item on the official goods stand is a handheld cooling device emblazoned with the phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from Gossip, her musical partnership with electronic pair Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the songs she has chosen to create is pop of a noticeably more intriguing stripe than the norm.

A Superb Debut

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

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: Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it’s also typical dancefloor-oriented pop, driven by precisely the Supremes sample its title suggests; the show is extended with a interpretation of Madonna’s Frozen that transforms into a medley of nineties club anthems, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to Set You Free by N-Trance.

Additional Fascinating Content

But there’s also more where Angel Of My Dreams came from. The song Headache combines an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with verses that present a borderline atonal style of rhythmic music or are surrounded with deep reverberation. She offers Unconditional to her mother: it has a fabulous melody, early 80s syndrums, and powerful guitar riffs allied to clanging industrial drums. IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the sound of 2000s electronic punk movement, or rather the thrilling strain of early 00s pop that was strongly inspired by electroclash, while the track Natural at Disaster begins like a piano ballad before unexpectedly swerving into a dark computerized noise.

An Appealing Presence

The artist on stage is a hugely appealing, cheerily unvarnished figure: she is, she announces at one point, “trembling uncontrollably”; shouting out her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are present in large numbers, she proposes showing appreciation by adding a official undergarment to the merchandise booth.

Future Possibilities

It could conclude the manner these kind of solo careers typically finish – the enmity towards former bandmate her previous colleague Jesy Nelson voiced within the song Natural at Disaster resolved, a press conference to announce that Little Mix are reunited – but the fact that the entire audience appear word-perfect as they join in vocally to an album that only came out a few weeks prior makes you wonder. And even if it does, the final Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Jade's individual musical path is not destined to fade into the realms of the dimly remembered placeholder.

• Jade performs at the Manchester venue O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester this evening and is traveling across the United Kingdom through October 23rd.