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With the exception of Harry Styles, individual artistic journeys of ex-participants of televised singing competition groups seldom grip the public imagination. These efforts typically adhere to certain rules – either an attempt at a more edgy urban music style, complete with at least one single including a cameo by an US hip-hop artist, or a lunge towards mature mainstream-approved polished adult contemporary – and they usually amount to a barely recalled interim project, the visual and auditory experience of someone gamely killing time before the inevitable band comeback concerts.

A Unique Journey

This common scenario that makes the idiosyncratic path thus far followed by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall surprisingly refreshing. She definitely participates in engaging in the typical activities that former talent show band members are wont to do, among them loudly underlining that she's free from the press-managed restrictions of the manufactured pop industry – judging by the audience this evening, 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 song line 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 launched her individual career with last year’s superb her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jolting and disjointed mixture of big pop balladry, noisy synthesisers and audio excerpts from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

During the performance on her first solo tour demonstrates, not every song on her debut album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as that: the track Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it’s also standard-issue disco pop, powered by precisely the Motown musical snippet its title suggests; things are padded out with a interpretation of Madonna’s Frozen that devolves into a medley of nineties club anthems, 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. The song Headache melds an Abba-esque chorus with song sections that present a nearly discordant style of rhythmic music or are surrounded with cavernous echo. She dedicates Unconditional to her mother: it has a wonderful tune, eighties-style electronic percussion, and powerful guitar riffs combined with metallic pounding beats. The song IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the sound of early 00s electroclash, or more accurately the thrilling strain 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.

An Appealing Presence

The artist on stage is a hugely appealing, cheerily unvarnished figure: she is, she announces at one point, “shaking like a shitting dog”; giving a shoutout to her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are present in large numbers, she proposes thanking them by adding a official undergarment to the merchandise booth.

Future Possibilities

It may well end the way such individual artistic pursuits end – the hostility towards former bandmate Jesy Nelson expressed in Natural at Disaster patched up, a media announcement to announce that Little Mix are reunited – but the reality that every attendee appear knowing every lyric as they sing along to a record that only came out a few weeks prior causes one to ponder. And even if it does, the final performance of Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Jade's individual musical path is unlikely to recede into the realms of the dimly remembered placeholder.

• Jade plays the Manchester venue O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester this evening and is touring the UK through October 23rd.