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Harry Styles aside, individual artistic journeys of ex-participants of TV talent show-manufactured bands rarely capture the audience's attention. These efforts typically adhere to predictable patterns – either an attempt at a more edgy urban music style, complete with at least one single including a guest appearance by an US hip-hop artist, or a lunge towards “grownup” mainstream-approved polished adult contemporary – 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

This common scenario 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 ex-reality TV group artists are wont to do, among them loudly underlining that she's free from the media-trained constraints of the factory-produced music business – based on tonight’s crowd, the most popular item on the merchandise stall is a handheld cooling device displaying the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from Gossip, her collaboration with electronic pair Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the music she’s opted to make is pop music with a far more fascinating style than the norm.

An Impressive First Single

She launched her individual career with last year’s superb her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jarring and disjointed melange 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 everything on her first full-length release That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as that: Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it’s also typical dancefloor-oriented pop, driven 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 combines an Abba-esque chorus with verses that present a borderline atonal brand of funk or are enfolded by cavernous echo. She dedicates the track Unconditional to her mother: it has a wonderful tune, eighties-style electronic percussion, and crashing rock guitar allied to metallic pounding beats. The song IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the sound of early 00s electroclash, or rather the exciting variation of early 00s pop that was heavily influenced by the electroclash genre, while Natural at Disaster starts out like a piano ballad before suddenly shifting into a malevolent electronic grind.

An Appealing Presence

The woman at its centre is a hugely appealing, delightfully authentic presence: she declares, she announces at a certain moment, “shaking like a shitting dog”; giving a shoutout to her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are here in force, she suggests showing appreciation by adding a official undergarment to the merch stand.

What Lies Ahead

It may well end the manner these kind of solo careers end – the enmity towards former bandmate her previous colleague Jesy Nelson voiced within Natural at Disaster resolved, a press conference to announce that the original group are back – but the fact that every attendee appear word-perfect as they join in vocally to an album that only came out a few weeks prior causes one to ponder. And should it occur, the final Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Jade's individual musical path is not destined to fade into the domain 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.