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Harry Styles aside, the solo careers of ex-participants of TV talent show-manufactured bands rarely capture the audience's attention. They usually follow predictable patterns – often a pursuit at a more edgy urban music style, replete with at least one single including a guest appearance by an US hip-hop artist, or a move into mature Radio 2-friendly polished adult contemporary – and they typically become a dimly remembered placeholder, the sight and sound of someone gamely killing time prior to the unavoidable band comeback concerts.

A Unique Journey

This common scenario that makes the idiosyncratic path 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 known for undertaking, including loudly underlining that she’s no longer subject the media-trained constraints of the manufactured pop industry – based on the audience this evening, the top-selling product on the merchandise stall is a handheld cooling device emblazoned with the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from Gossip, her musical partnership with dance duo the group Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the music she’s opted to make is pop of a noticeably more intriguing stripe than the norm.

A Superb Debut

She opened her solo account with the previous year's excellent her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jarring and fragmented melange of big pop balladry, noisy synthesisers and samples from the classic track Puppet On A String by Sandie Shaw.

As the set on her first solo tour demonstrates, not every song 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, powered by exactly the Supremes sample the name implies; things are padded out with a cover 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

However, there exists additional material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. The song Headache melds an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with song sections that present a nearly discordant style of rhythmic music or are surrounded with cavernous echo. She dedicates Unconditional to her mother: it features a fabulous melody, early 80s syndrums, and powerful guitar riffs allied to metallic pounding beats. IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the sound 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 begins like a piano ballad before unexpectedly swerving into a malevolent electronic grind.

A Charming Performer

The woman at its centre is a hugely appealing, delightfully authentic figure: she declares, she announces at one point, “trembling uncontrollably”; giving a shoutout to her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are here in force, she proposes thanking them by adding a branded jockstrap to the merch stand.

Future Possibilities

It may well end the way these kind of solo careers end – the hostility towards ex-group member her previous colleague Jesy Nelson expressed in the song Natural at Disaster resolved, a media announcement to declare that the original group are reunited – but the fact that every attendee appear knowing every lyric as they join in vocally to an album that was released just a few weeks prior causes one to ponder. And even if it does, the final Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Thirlwall’s solo career is not destined to fade into the realms of the dimly remembered placeholder.

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