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With the exception of Harry Styles, the solo careers of ex-participants of TV talent show-manufactured bands rarely capture 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 featuring a cameo by an American rapper, or a move into “grownup” mainstream-approved smooth pop-rock territory – and they usually amount to a barely recalled interim project, the sight and sound of someone enthusiastically passing the years before the inevitable reunion tour.

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’s certainly not above engaging in the typical activities that ex-reality TV group artists are known for undertaking, among them emphatically stating 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 fan displaying the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from Gossip, her collaboration with dance duo the group Confidence Man – but regardless, the songs she has chosen to create is pop of a noticeably more intriguing stripe than the norm.

An Impressive First Single

She opened her solo account with last year’s superb Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jarring and fragmented melange of grand emotional pop songs, loud electronic instruments and audio excerpts from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

During the performance on her first solo tour proves, not every song on her debut album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as that: the track Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it’s also standard-issue disco pop, driven by exactly the Motown musical snippet the name implies; things are padded out with a cover of the Madonna classic Frozen that transforms into a musical compilation of 90s dance hits, 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 borderline atonal brand of funk or are surrounded with deep reverberation. She offers the track Unconditional to her mother: it features a fabulous melody, early 80s syndrums, and crashing rock guitar allied to clanging industrial drums. The song IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the sound of 2000s electronic punk movement, or rather the exciting variation of millennium-era popular music that was heavily influenced by the electroclash genre, while the track Natural at Disaster starts out like a keyboard-led emotional song before unexpectedly swerving into a dark computerized noise.

A Charming Performer

The artist on stage is a immensely likable, cheerily unvarnished presence: she is, she announces at one point, “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 hostility towards former bandmate Jesy Nelson expressed in Natural at Disaster patched up, a media announcement to announce that Little Mix are reunited – but the fact that every attendee appear 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 performance of Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Thirlwall’s solo career is not destined to fade into the realms of the barely recalled interim project.

• Jade performs at the O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester this evening and is touring the UK through October 23rd.