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Harry Styles aside, the solo careers of former members of TV talent show-manufactured bands rarely capture the public imagination. They usually follow predictable patterns – either an attempt at a toughened-up R&B sound, complete with at least one single featuring a guest appearance by an American rapper, 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 prior to the unavoidable band comeback concerts.

An Idiosyncratic Path

It’s a state of affairs that renders the unconventional route thus far followed by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She’s certainly not above engaging in the typical activities that former talent show band members are wont to do, among them loudly underlining that she’s no longer subject the media-trained constraints of the manufactured pop industry – based on the audience this evening, the most popular item on the merchandise stall 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 the previous year's excellent Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jarring and fragmented mixture of grand emotional pop songs, noisy synthesisers and audio excerpts from the classic track Puppet On A String by Sandie Shaw.

During the performance on her initial individual concert series demonstrates, not every song on her debut album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as her debut single: the track Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it's equally standard-issue disco pop, powered by precisely the Supremes sample the name implies; the show is extended with a interpretation of the Madonna classic Frozen that devolves 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. Headache melds an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with song sections that offer a borderline atonal style of rhythmic music or are surrounded with cavernous echo. She offers the track Unconditional to her mum: it has a fabulous melody, early 80s syndrums, and powerful guitar riffs combined with clanging industrial drums. IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the sound of early 00s electroclash, or more accurately the exciting variation of early 00s pop 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 artist on stage is a hugely appealing, delightfully authentic figure: she is, she states at a certain moment, “trembling uncontrollably”; shouting out her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are here in force, she suggests thanking them by including a official undergarment to the merchandise booth.

What Lies Ahead

It may well end the manner such individual artistic pursuits typically finish – the enmity towards ex-group member her previous colleague Jesy Nelson expressed in Natural at Disaster patched up, a press conference to declare that Little Mix are reunited – but the reality that the entire audience appear knowing every lyric as they sing along to an album that only came out a few weeks prior causes one to ponder. And should it occur, the final performance of 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 plays the O2 Victoria Warehouse in the city of Manchester this evening and is touring the UK until 23 October.