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With the exception of Harry Styles, the solo careers of former members of TV talent show-manufactured bands seldom grip the public imagination. They usually follow predictable patterns – either an attempt at a more edgy urban music style, replete with at least a track featuring a cameo by an American rapper, or a lunge towards “grownup” Radio 2-friendly polished adult contemporary – and they usually amount to a barely recalled interim project, the visual and auditory experience of someone gamely killing time before the inevitable reunion tour.

An Idiosyncratic Path

This common scenario that makes the idiosyncratic path thus far followed by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall surprisingly refreshing. She’s certainly not above 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 manufactured pop industry – judging by the audience this evening, the top-selling product on the official goods stand is a fan displaying the phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from the track Gossip, her musical partnership with dance duo Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the songs she has chosen to create is pop of a noticeably more intriguing stripe 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 deeply odd, jolting and disjointed mixture of grand emotional pop songs, loud electronic instruments and samples from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

During the performance on her initial individual concert series proves, not everything on her debut album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as her debut single: Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it's equally typical dancefloor-oriented pop, driven by exactly the Supremes sample the name implies; the show is extended with a cover of Madonna’s Frozen that devolves into a medley of 90s dance hits, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.

Additional Fascinating Content

However, there exists additional where Angel Of My Dreams came from. The song Headache combines an Abba-esque chorus with verses that present a borderline atonal style of rhythmic music or are surrounded with cavernous echo. She offers Unconditional to her mother: it features a wonderful tune, eighties-style electronic percussion, and powerful guitar riffs allied to metallic pounding beats. The song IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the sound of 2000s electronic punk movement, or more accurately the exciting variation of millennium-era popular music that was heavily influenced by electroclash, while Natural at Disaster starts out like a keyboard-led emotional song before unexpectedly swerving into a malevolent electronic grind.

An Appealing Presence

The artist on stage is a immensely likable, delightfully authentic presence: she declares, she states at one point, “shaking like a shitting dog”; giving a shoutout to her queer audience members, who are present in large numbers, she proposes thanking them by including a official undergarment to the merch stand.

Future Possibilities

It could conclude the way such individual artistic pursuits end – the enmity towards ex-group member Jesy Nelson expressed in Natural at Disaster resolved, a press conference to declare that Little Mix are back – but the reality that every attendee seem to be word-perfect as they join in vocally to a record that only came out a few weeks prior causes one to ponder. And should it occur, the final Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Thirlwall’s solo career is unlikely to recede into the realms of the barely recalled interim project.

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