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Harry Styles aside, individual artistic journeys of former members of televised singing competition groups rarely capture the audience's attention. These efforts typically adhere to certain rules – either an attempt at a toughened-up R&B sound, replete with at least a track featuring a cameo by an American rapper, or a lunge towards “grownup” mainstream-approved polished adult contemporary – and they typically become a barely recalled interim project, the visual and auditory experience of someone enthusiastically passing the years before the inevitable reunion tour.

A Unique Journey

This common scenario that renders the unconventional route currently taken by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall surprisingly refreshing. She’s certainly not above engaging in the typical activities that ex-reality TV group artists are known for undertaking, including 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 phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from the track Gossip, her collaboration with dance duo the group Confidence Man – but regardless, the music she’s opted to make is pop music with a far more fascinating style than usual.

A Superb Debut

She opened her solo account with last year’s superb Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jarring and disjointed melange of grand emotional pop songs, noisy synthesisers and samples from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

As the set on her initial individual concert series proves, not everything on her first full-length release That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as that: 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 cover of the Madonna classic Frozen that transforms into a medley of 90s dance hits, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to Set You Free by N-Trance.

Additional Fascinating Content

However, there exists additional material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. Headache melds an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with verses that present a nearly discordant style of rhythmic music or are surrounded with deep reverberation. She offers the track Unconditional to her mother: it has a wonderful tune, early 80s syndrums, and crashing rock guitar allied to metallic pounding beats. The song IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the sound of 2000s electronic punk movement, or rather the exciting variation 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.

A Charming Performer

The artist on stage is a immensely likable, cheerily unvarnished figure: she is, she announces at one point, “trembling uncontrollably”; giving a shoutout to her queer audience members, who are present in large numbers, she proposes thanking them by adding a branded jockstrap to the merchandise booth.

Future Possibilities

It may well end the manner such individual artistic pursuits end – the hostility towards former bandmate Jesy Nelson expressed in Natural at Disaster resolved, a media announcement to declare that Little Mix are reunited – but the fact that the entire audience seem to be knowing every lyric as they sing along to an album that only came out a month ago makes you wonder. And even if it does, the closing performance of Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Thirlwall’s solo career is unlikely to recede into the realms of the dimly remembered placeholder.

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