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With the exception of Harry Styles, individual artistic journeys of former members of TV talent show-manufactured bands rarely capture the public imagination. They usually follow certain rules – often a pursuit at a more edgy urban music style, replete with at least a track featuring a cameo by an US hip-hop artist, or a lunge towards “grownup” mainstream-approved 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 reunion tour.

An Idiosyncratic Path

It’s a state of affairs that makes the idiosyncratic path currently taken by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall surprisingly refreshing. She’s certainly not above engaging in the typical activities that former talent show band members are wont to do, among them emphatically stating that she's free from the media-trained constraints of the factory-produced music business – based on the audience this evening, the top-selling product on the merchandise stall is a handheld cooling device displaying the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from the track Gossip, her collaboration with electronic pair the group Confidence Man – but regardless, the songs she has chosen to create is pop of a noticeably more intriguing stripe than the norm.

A Superb Debut

She opened her solo account with the previous year's excellent Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jolting and fragmented melange of big pop balladry, 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 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 standard-issue disco pop, powered by exactly the Supremes sample its title suggests; the show is extended with a interpretation of Madonna’s Frozen that transforms into a musical compilation of 90s dance hits, from 808’s Pacific 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. The song Headache melds an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with verses that offer a borderline atonal brand of funk or are surrounded with cavernous echo. She offers the track Unconditional to her mother: it features a wonderful tune, eighties-style electronic percussion, and crashing rock guitar combined with metallic pounding beats. IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the musical aesthetic of 2000s electronic punk movement, or more accurately the thrilling strain of early 00s pop that was strongly inspired by the electroclash genre, while Natural at Disaster starts out like a piano ballad before unexpectedly swerving into a dark computerized noise.

A Charming Performer

The artist on stage is a immensely likable, cheerily unvarnished figure: she declares, she announces at one point, “shaking like a shitting dog”; giving a shoutout to her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are present in large numbers, she suggests showing appreciation by adding a branded jockstrap to the merchandise booth.

Future Possibilities

It may well end the way such individual artistic pursuits end – the hostility towards former bandmate Jesy Nelson voiced within the song Natural at Disaster resolved, a press conference to announce that the original group are reunited – but the fact that the entire audience seem to be word-perfect as they join in vocally to a record that only came out a few weeks prior causes one to ponder. 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 performs at the O2 Victoria Warehouse in the city of Manchester tonight and is touring the UK until 23 October.