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With the exception of Harry Styles, the solo careers of ex-participants of televised singing competition groups rarely capture the public imagination. These efforts typically adhere to predictable patterns – either an attempt at a more edgy urban music style, replete with at least a track including a guest appearance by an American rapper, or a move into “grownup” mainstream-approved smooth pop-rock territory – and they usually amount to a dimly remembered placeholder, the visual and auditory experience of someone enthusiastically passing the years before the inevitable band comeback concerts.

An Idiosyncratic Path

This common scenario that makes the idiosyncratic path thus far followed by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She’s certainly not above doing the kind of things that former talent show band members are wont to do, including loudly underlining that she’s no longer subject the press-managed restrictions of the factory-produced music business – based on tonight’s crowd, the top-selling product 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 Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the music she’s opted to make is pop music with a far more fascinating style than the norm.

A Superb Debut

She opened her solo account with the previous year's excellent Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jolting and disjointed melange of big pop balladry, loud electronic instruments and audio excerpts from the classic track Puppet On A String by Sandie Shaw.

As the set on her first solo tour proves, not everything on her first full-length release That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as her debut single: the track Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it’s also typical dancefloor-oriented pop, powered by precisely the Motown musical snippet its title suggests; things are padded out with a interpretation of Madonna’s Frozen that transforms into a musical compilation of 90s dance hits, from 808’s Pacific State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.

Additional Fascinating Content

But there’s also more 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 deep reverberation. She offers the track Unconditional to her mother: it features a wonderful tune, eighties-style electronic percussion, and crashing rock guitar combined with metallic pounding beats. The song IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the sound of 2000s electronic punk movement, or rather the exciting variation of early 00s pop that was heavily influenced by the electroclash genre, while the track Natural at Disaster begins like a piano ballad before unexpectedly swerving into a dark computerized noise.

An Appealing Presence

The woman at its centre is a immensely likable, delightfully authentic presence: she is, she announces at a certain moment, “trembling uncontrollably”; giving a shoutout to her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are here in force, she proposes thanking them by adding a official undergarment to the merchandise booth.

Future Possibilities

It may well end the manner these kind of solo careers typically finish – the enmity towards former bandmate her previous colleague Jesy Nelson voiced within the song Natural at Disaster patched up, a media announcement to announce that Little Mix are back – but the reality that every attendee seem to be knowing every lyric as they join in vocally to an album that only came out a month ago makes you wonder. And should it occur, the closing Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Thirlwall’s solo career is unlikely to recede into the domain of the barely recalled interim project.

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