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Harry Styles aside, individual artistic journeys of former members of televised singing competition groups seldom grip the audience's attention. These efforts typically adhere to predictable patterns – often a pursuit at a more edgy urban music style, replete with at least a track featuring a cameo by an American rapper, or a move into mature mainstream-approved smooth pop-rock territory – and they typically become a dimly remembered placeholder, the sight and sound of someone gamely killing time prior to the unavoidable reunion tour.

An Idiosyncratic Path

It’s a state of affairs that renders the unconventional route currently taken by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall surprisingly refreshing. She’s certainly not above engaging in the typical activities that ex-reality TV group artists are wont to do, among them emphatically stating that she’s no longer subject the press-managed restrictions of the factory-produced music business – judging by tonight’s crowd, the top-selling product 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 musical partnership with electronic pair the group Confidence Man – but regardless, the music she’s opted to make is pop of a noticeably more intriguing stripe than the norm.

A Superb Debut

She opened her solo account with last year’s superb her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jarring and fragmented mixture of big pop balladry, noisy synthesisers and samples 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 her debut single: the track Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it’s also standard-issue disco pop, powered by precisely the Supremes sample its title suggests; things are padded out with a interpretation of Madonna’s Frozen that devolves into a musical compilation of 90s dance hits, from 808’s Pacific State to Set You Free by N-Trance.

Additional Fascinating Content

However, there exists additional where Angel Of My Dreams came from. Headache melds an Abba-esque chorus with verses that offer a nearly discordant style of rhythmic music or are enfolded by cavernous echo. She dedicates the track Unconditional to her mother: it has a wonderful tune, eighties-style electronic percussion, and powerful guitar riffs combined with 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 strongly inspired by the electroclash genre, while the track Natural at Disaster begins like a keyboard-led emotional song before suddenly shifting into a malevolent electronic grind.

An Appealing Presence

The woman at its centre is a immensely likable, cheerily unvarnished presence: she is, she states at one point, “trembling uncontrollably”; giving a shoutout to her queer audience members, who are here in force, she suggests thanking them by adding a official undergarment to the merchandise booth.

What Lies Ahead

It could conclude the manner such individual artistic pursuits end – the enmity towards former bandmate Jesy Nelson voiced within 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 join in vocally to an album that was released just a month ago causes one to ponder. And should it occur, the final performance of Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Thirlwall’s solo career is not destined to fade into the domain of the dimly remembered placeholder.

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