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With the exception of Harry Styles, individual artistic journeys of former members of televised singing competition groups seldom grip the audience's attention. These efforts typically adhere to certain rules – either an attempt at a toughened-up R&B sound, complete with at least a track including a cameo by an US hip-hop artist, or a lunge towards mature mainstream-approved polished adult contemporary – and they typically become a dimly remembered placeholder, the visual and auditory experience of someone enthusiastically passing the years prior to the unavoidable band comeback concerts.

An Idiosyncratic Path

It’s a state of affairs that renders the unconventional route currently taken by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She definitely participates in engaging in the typical activities that ex-reality TV group artists are known for undertaking, among them emphatically stating that she’s no longer subject the media-trained constraints of the factory-produced music business – based on tonight’s crowd, the most popular item on the official goods stand is a handheld cooling device displaying the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from the track 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 usual.

A Superb Debut

She opened her solo account with last year’s superb Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jarring and disjointed melange 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 first full-length release That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as her debut single: Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it's equally typical dancefloor-oriented pop, driven by exactly the Motown musical snippet the name implies; 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 N-Trance’s Set You Free.

More Intriguing Material

But there’s also more where Angel Of My Dreams came from. Headache melds an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with verses that present a borderline atonal style of rhythmic music or are enfolded by deep reverberation. She dedicates the track Unconditional to her mother: it features a wonderful tune, early 80s syndrums, and crashing rock guitar combined with clanging industrial drums. IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the musical aesthetic of early 00s electroclash, or rather the exciting variation of millennium-era popular music that was heavily influenced by the electroclash genre, while Natural at Disaster starts out like a piano ballad before unexpectedly swerving into a malevolent electronic grind.

An Appealing Presence

The artist on stage is a hugely appealing, delightfully authentic figure: she is, she announces at a certain moment, “shaking like a shitting dog”; shouting out her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are present in large numbers, she suggests thanking them by including a official undergarment to the merchandise booth.

What Lies Ahead

It may well end the manner these kind of solo careers end – the enmity towards former bandmate Jesy Nelson expressed in the song Natural at Disaster patched up, a media announcement to announce that the original group are reunited – but the fact that every attendee seem to be knowing every lyric as they join in vocally to a record that was released just a few weeks prior causes one to ponder. And should it occur, the closing performance of Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Thirlwall’s solo career is not destined to fade into the domain of the dimly remembered placeholder.

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