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Harry Styles aside, the solo careers of former members of televised singing competition groups 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 including a guest appearance by an US hip-hop artist, or a lunge towards mature Radio 2-friendly smooth pop-rock territory – and they typically become a barely recalled interim project, the visual and auditory experience of someone gamely killing time before the inevitable band comeback concerts.

An Idiosyncratic Path

It’s a state of affairs that renders the unconventional route currently taken 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, including emphatically stating that she’s no longer subject the media-trained constraints of the manufactured pop industry – judging by tonight’s crowd, the top-selling product on the official goods stand is a fan emblazoned with the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from Gossip, her collaboration with electronic pair the group Confidence Man – but regardless, the music she’s opted to make is pop music with a far more fascinating style than usual.

A Superb Debut

She launched her individual career with last year’s superb Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, 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 initial individual concert series proves, not everything on her first full-length release her album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as that: Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it's equally standard-issue disco pop, driven by precisely the Supremes sample its title suggests; things are padded out with a cover of the Madonna classic 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 combines an Abba-esque chorus with verses that offer a nearly discordant brand of funk or are enfolded by deep reverberation. She offers the track Unconditional to her mother: it features a wonderful tune, early 80s syndrums, and crashing rock guitar combined with metallic pounding beats. IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the sound of 2000s electronic punk movement, or more accurately the thrilling strain of early 00s pop 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 dark computerized noise.

A Charming Performer

The artist on stage is a hugely appealing, cheerily unvarnished presence: she is, she announces at one point, “shaking like a shitting dog”; shouting out her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are present in large numbers, she proposes thanking them by including a branded jockstrap to the merch stand.

Future Possibilities

It could conclude the manner such individual artistic pursuits typically finish – the enmity towards former bandmate her previous colleague Jesy Nelson expressed in the song Natural at Disaster resolved, a media announcement to announce that Little Mix are reunited – but the reality that every attendee appear word-perfect as they join in vocally to a record that only came out a month ago makes you wonder. And even if it does, the closing performance of Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Thirlwall’s solo career is not destined to fade into the domain of the barely recalled interim project.

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