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Harry Styles aside, the solo careers of former members of televised singing competition groups seldom grip the audience's attention. These efforts typically adhere to certain rules – either an attempt 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 move into “grownup” mainstream-approved smooth pop-rock territory – and they typically become a barely recalled interim project, the visual and auditory experience of someone enthusiastically passing the years before the inevitable band comeback concerts.

A Unique Journey

This common scenario that makes the idiosyncratic path currently taken by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She’s certainly not above doing the kind of things that former talent show band members are wont to do, including emphatically stating that she’s no longer subject the press-managed restrictions 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 legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from Gossip, her musical partnership with electronic pair the group Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the songs she has chosen to create is pop music with a far more fascinating style than usual.

A Superb Debut

She launched her individual career with the previous year's excellent Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jarring and fragmented melange of grand emotional pop songs, noisy synthesisers and samples from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

During the performance on her initial individual concert series proves, not everything on her first full-length release her 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 also standard-issue disco pop, driven by precisely the Motown musical snippet its title suggests; things are padded out with a interpretation of the Madonna classic 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.

More Intriguing Material

However, there exists additional where Angel Of My Dreams came from. Headache combines an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with song sections that offer a borderline atonal brand of funk or are enfolded by cavernous echo. She dedicates Unconditional to her mother: it features a wonderful tune, eighties-style electronic percussion, and powerful guitar riffs allied to metallic pounding beats. The song IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the musical aesthetic of early 00s electroclash, or more accurately the thrilling strain of early 00s pop that was heavily influenced by electroclash, while Natural at Disaster begins like a piano ballad before unexpectedly swerving into a malevolent electronic grind.

A Charming Performer

The woman at its centre is a immensely likable, cheerily unvarnished presence: she is, she announces at a certain moment, “shaking like a shitting dog”; shouting out her queer audience members, who are here in force, she suggests thanking them by including a branded jockstrap to the merchandise booth.

Future Possibilities

It could conclude the manner these kind of solo careers typically finish – the enmity towards former bandmate Jesy Nelson expressed in Natural at Disaster patched up, a press conference to declare that Little Mix are reunited – but the reality that the entire audience appear knowing every lyric as they sing along to an album that only came out a month ago makes you wonder. And should it occur, the final performance of 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 performs at the O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester this evening and is traveling across the United Kingdom through October 23rd.