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Harry Styles aside, the solo careers of ex-participants of TV talent show-manufactured bands 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 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 visual and auditory experience of someone gamely killing time prior to the unavoidable band comeback concerts.

A Unique Journey

This common scenario that renders the unconventional route currently taken by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She definitely participates in engaging in the typical activities that ex-reality TV group artists are known for undertaking, including emphatically stating that she's free from the media-trained constraints of the manufactured pop industry – judging by tonight’s crowd, the most popular item on the official goods stand is a handheld cooling device displaying the phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from Gossip, her collaboration with electronic pair the group Confidence Man – but regardless, the songs she has chosen to create is pop music with a far more fascinating style than the norm.

A Superb Debut

She launched her individual career with the previous year's excellent her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jolting and fragmented melange of grand emotional pop songs, loud electronic instruments and audio excerpts from the classic track Puppet On A String by Sandie Shaw.

During the performance on her first solo tour 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 equally typical dancefloor-oriented pop, powered by precisely the Motown musical snippet the name implies; the show is extended with a interpretation of Madonna’s Frozen that transforms into a musical compilation of nineties club anthems, 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. The song Headache melds an Abba-esque chorus with song sections that present a borderline atonal style of rhythmic music or are surrounded with cavernous echo. She offers the track Unconditional to her mother: it has a wonderful tune, early 80s syndrums, and crashing rock guitar combined with clanging industrial drums. IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the sound of early 00s electroclash, or rather the thrilling strain of millennium-era popular music that was strongly inspired by the electroclash genre, while the track Natural at Disaster starts out 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, delightfully authentic presence: she declares, she announces at one point, “trembling uncontrollably”; giving a shoutout to her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are here in force, she suggests thanking them by including a branded jockstrap to the merchandise booth.

Future Possibilities

It could conclude the manner such individual artistic pursuits end – the hostility towards former bandmate Jesy Nelson voiced within Natural at Disaster resolved, a media announcement to announce that the original group are reunited – but the fact that every attendee appear word-perfect as they join in vocally to a record that was released just a few weeks prior makes you wonder. And should it occur, the closing performance of Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Jade's individual musical path is not destined to fade into the domain of the dimly remembered placeholder.

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