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Harry Styles aside, individual artistic journeys 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 including a guest appearance by an US hip-hop artist, or a move into mature mainstream-approved smooth pop-rock territory – and they usually amount to a barely recalled interim project, the visual and auditory experience of someone enthusiastically passing the years prior to the unavoidable band comeback concerts.

A Unique Journey

It’s a state of affairs that renders the unconventional route thus far followed by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall surprisingly refreshing. She’s certainly not above engaging in the typical activities that former talent show band members are wont to do, including emphatically stating that she’s no longer subject the media-trained constraints of the manufactured pop industry – based on the audience this evening, the most popular item on the merchandise stall is a handheld cooling device displaying the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from the track Gossip, her musical partnership with electronic pair Confidence Man – but regardless, the songs she has chosen to create is pop music with a far more fascinating style than the norm.

A Superb Debut

She launched her individual career with the previous year's excellent Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jarring and disjointed mixture of big pop balladry, loud electronic instruments and samples from the classic track Puppet On A String by Sandie Shaw.

During the performance on her initial individual concert series 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 equally typical dancefloor-oriented pop, powered by precisely the Motown musical snippet the name implies; the show is extended with a interpretation of the Madonna classic Frozen that devolves into a medley of nineties club anthems, 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 melds an Abba-esque chorus with verses that offer a nearly discordant style of rhythmic music or are enfolded by deep reverberation. She dedicates Unconditional to her mother: it has a fabulous melody, eighties-style electronic percussion, and crashing rock guitar allied to clanging industrial drums. The song IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the musical aesthetic of 2000s electronic punk movement, or rather the thrilling strain of millennium-era popular music that was strongly inspired by electroclash, while Natural at Disaster begins like a keyboard-led emotional song before unexpectedly swerving into a dark computerized noise.

An Appealing Presence

The artist on stage is a hugely appealing, cheerily unvarnished presence: she is, she announces at a certain moment, “trembling uncontrollably”; shouting out her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are present in large numbers, she proposes thanking them by adding a branded jockstrap to the merch stand.

What Lies Ahead

It may well end the way these kind of solo careers typically finish – the enmity towards ex-group member her previous colleague Jesy Nelson expressed in the song Natural at Disaster resolved, a press conference to declare that the original group are reunited – but the fact that the entire audience seem to be word-perfect 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 emphasizes that Jade's individual musical path is unlikely to recede into the domain of the dimly remembered placeholder.

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