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With the exception of Harry Styles, the solo careers 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 toughened-up R&B sound, complete with at least a track including a cameo by an US hip-hop artist, or a lunge towards “grownup” mainstream-approved smooth pop-rock territory – and they typically become a barely recalled interim project, the visual and auditory experience of someone enthusiastically passing the years before the inevitable band comeback concerts.

An Idiosyncratic Path

It’s a state of affairs that makes the idiosyncratic path currently taken by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She definitely participates in doing the kind of things that former talent show band members are known for undertaking, among them loudly underlining that she's free from the press-managed restrictions of the factory-produced music business – based on the audience this evening, the top-selling product on the official goods stand is a handheld cooling device emblazoned with the phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from Gossip, her musical partnership with electronic pair Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the songs she has chosen to create is pop music with a far more fascinating style than usual.

A Superb Debut

She launched her individual career with the previous year's excellent Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jolting and fragmented melange of big pop balladry, noisy synthesisers and samples from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

During the performance on her initial individual concert series proves, not everything on her first full-length release her album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as that: Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it's equally typical dancefloor-oriented pop, powered by exactly the Motown musical snippet its title suggests; the show is extended with a interpretation of Madonna’s Frozen that transforms into a medley of 90s dance hits, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.

More Intriguing Material

But there’s also more where Angel Of My Dreams came from. Headache combines an Abba-esque chorus with verses that present a nearly discordant style of rhythmic music or are surrounded with cavernous echo. She offers Unconditional to her mother: it has a fabulous melody, early 80s syndrums, and powerful guitar riffs allied to clanging industrial drums. IT Girl surprisingly resurrects 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 dark computerized noise.

An Appealing Presence

The artist on stage is a immensely likable, cheerily unvarnished figure: she is, she states at a certain moment, “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 official undergarment to the merchandise booth.

What Lies Ahead

It may well end the way such individual artistic pursuits typically finish – the enmity towards ex-group member her previous colleague Jesy Nelson voiced within Natural at Disaster patched up, a press conference to declare that Little Mix are back – but the reality that every attendee appear word-perfect as they sing along to an album that only came out a few weeks prior causes one to ponder. And even if it does, the final Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Jade's individual musical path is not destined to fade into the realms of the barely recalled interim project.

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