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Harry Styles aside, the solo careers of former members of televised singing competition groups seldom grip the audience's attention. They usually follow predictable patterns – either an attempt at a more edgy urban music style, complete with at least a track including a guest appearance by an American rapper, or a lunge towards “grownup” Radio 2-friendly smooth pop-rock territory – and they usually amount to a barely recalled interim project, the visual and auditory experience of someone enthusiastically passing the years before the inevitable band comeback concerts.

An Idiosyncratic Path

It’s a state of affairs that renders the unconventional route thus far followed by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She’s certainly not above doing the kind of things that ex-reality TV group artists are wont to do, including loudly underlining that she's free from the press-managed restrictions of the manufactured pop industry – judging by tonight’s crowd, the top-selling product on the merchandise stall is a handheld cooling device emblazoned with the phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from Gossip, her musical partnership with electronic pair Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the music she’s opted to make is pop music with a far more fascinating style than the norm.

An Impressive First Single

She launched her individual career with last year’s superb Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jolting and fragmented mixture of grand emotional pop songs, loud electronic instruments and audio excerpts from the classic track Puppet On A String by Sandie Shaw.

As the set on her initial individual concert series demonstrates, not every song on her debut album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as that: the track Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it's equally typical dancefloor-oriented pop, driven by precisely the Supremes sample the name implies; the show is extended with a interpretation of the Madonna classic Frozen that devolves into a medley of 90s dance hits, from 808’s Pacific State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.

More Intriguing Material

But there’s also more where Angel Of My Dreams came from. Headache combines an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with verses that present a borderline atonal brand of funk or are enfolded by deep reverberation. She dedicates Unconditional to her mum: it has a fabulous melody, early 80s syndrums, and powerful guitar riffs combined with metallic pounding beats. The song IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the musical aesthetic of 2000s electronic punk movement, or rather the thrilling strain of early 00s pop that was heavily influenced by electroclash, while the track 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 is, she states at one point, “shaking like a shitting dog”; giving a shoutout to her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are present in large numbers, she proposes showing appreciation by including a branded jockstrap to the merchandise booth.

What Lies Ahead

It may well end the manner these kind of solo careers end – the hostility towards former bandmate her previous colleague Jesy Nelson voiced within the song Natural at Disaster patched up, a press conference to declare that the original group are back – but the reality that the entire audience appear word-perfect as they sing along to an album that was released just a month ago makes you wonder. And even if it does, the final performance of Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Thirlwall’s solo career is unlikely to recede into the domain of the barely recalled interim project.

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