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With the exception of Harry Styles, 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 toughened-up R&B sound, complete with at least one single including a cameo by an American rapper, or a lunge towards “grownup” 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

This common scenario that makes the idiosyncratic path 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 wont to do, among them loudly underlining that she's free from the media-trained constraints of the factory-produced music business – based on tonight’s crowd, the most popular item on the merchandise stall is a handheld cooling device emblazoned with the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from Gossip, her musical partnership with dance duo 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 opened her solo account with last year’s superb her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jarring and fragmented melange of big pop balladry, loud electronic instruments and audio excerpts from the classic track Puppet On A String by Sandie Shaw.

During the performance on her initial individual concert series demonstrates, not everything on her debut album her album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as that: the track Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, 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 the Madonna classic 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

But there’s also more material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. Headache combines an Abba-esque chorus with verses that offer a borderline atonal brand of funk or are enfolded by deep reverberation. She dedicates the track Unconditional to her mother: it features a wonderful tune, early 80s syndrums, and crashing rock guitar allied to 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 strongly inspired by electroclash, while the track Natural at Disaster begins like a piano ballad before unexpectedly swerving into a malevolent electronic grind.

A Charming Performer

The artist on stage is a hugely appealing, delightfully authentic presence: she declares, she announces at a certain moment, “shaking like a shitting dog”; shouting out her queer audience members, who are present in large numbers, she proposes showing appreciation by including a official undergarment to the merchandise booth.

What Lies Ahead

It may well end the way such individual artistic pursuits typically finish – the enmity towards ex-group member Jesy Nelson expressed in the song Natural at Disaster resolved, a media announcement to announce that the original group are back – but the fact that the entire audience appear knowing every lyric as they join in vocally to a record that only came out a month ago causes one to ponder. 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 realms of the barely recalled interim project.

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