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With the exception of Harry Styles, the solo careers of former members of televised singing competition groups rarely capture the audience's attention. They usually follow 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” Radio 2-friendly smooth pop-rock territory – and they usually amount to a barely recalled interim project, the visual and auditory experience of someone gamely killing time prior to the unavoidable band comeback concerts.

An Idiosyncratic Path

This common scenario that renders the unconventional route currently taken by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She definitely participates in engaging in the typical activities that ex-reality TV group artists are known for undertaking, including emphatically stating that she’s no longer subject the media-trained constraints of the manufactured pop industry – judging by the audience this evening, the top-selling product on the official goods stand is a fan emblazoned with the phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from Gossip, her collaboration with electronic pair Confidence Man – but regardless, the music she’s opted to make is pop of a noticeably more intriguing stripe than usual.

A Superb Debut

She launched her individual career with last year’s superb Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jolting and disjointed melange of grand emotional pop songs, loud electronic instruments and audio excerpts from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

As the set on her initial individual concert series proves, not everything on her debut album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as her debut single: the track Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it's equally standard-issue disco pop, driven by precisely the Motown musical snippet the name implies; things are padded out with a interpretation of the Madonna classic Frozen that transforms into a medley of nineties club anthems, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.

Additional Fascinating Content

But there’s also more material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. The song Headache combines an Abba-esque chorus with verses that present a borderline atonal style of rhythmic music or are surrounded with cavernous echo. She dedicates Unconditional to her mother: it has a fabulous melody, eighties-style electronic percussion, and powerful guitar riffs allied to clanging industrial drums. The song IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the musical aesthetic of early 00s electroclash, or more accurately the exciting variation of millennium-era popular music that was heavily influenced by electroclash, while Natural at Disaster begins like a piano ballad before unexpectedly swerving into a dark computerized noise.

A Charming Performer

The artist on stage is a immensely likable, delightfully authentic presence: she is, she announces at a certain moment, “trembling uncontrollably”; giving a shoutout to her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are here in force, she proposes showing appreciation by including a branded jockstrap to the merchandise booth.

What Lies Ahead

It may well end the way these kind of solo careers end – the hostility towards former bandmate her previous colleague Jesy Nelson voiced within Natural at Disaster resolved, a press conference to declare that Little Mix are reunited – but the reality that the entire audience seem to be knowing every lyric as they join in vocally to a record that only came out a month ago makes you wonder. And even if it does, the final Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Thirlwall’s solo career is not destined to fade into the realms of the barely recalled interim project.

• Jade plays the O2 Victoria Warehouse in the city of Manchester tonight and is touring the UK through October 23rd.