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Harry Styles aside, individual artistic journeys of former members of TV talent show-manufactured bands seldom grip the audience's attention. They usually follow predictable patterns – often a pursuit at a more edgy urban music style, complete with at least a track including a cameo by an American rapper, or a lunge towards “grownup” Radio 2-friendly polished adult contemporary – and they typically become a dimly remembered placeholder, the visual and auditory experience of someone gamely killing time prior to the unavoidable band comeback concerts.

An Idiosyncratic Path

This common scenario that makes the idiosyncratic path currently taken by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She’s certainly not above doing the kind of things that former talent show band members are known for undertaking, including emphatically stating that she's free from the media-trained constraints of the factory-produced music business – based on tonight’s crowd, the top-selling product on the official goods stand is a fan displaying the phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from Gossip, her musical partnership with dance duo Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the songs she has chosen to create is pop music with a far more fascinating style than usual.

An Impressive First Single

She launched her individual career with last year’s superb her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jarring and disjointed melange of big pop balladry, loud electronic instruments and audio excerpts from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

As the set on her initial individual concert series demonstrates, not everything on her first full-length release her album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as her debut single: the track Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it's equally standard-issue disco pop, powered 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 Set You Free by N-Trance.

More Intriguing Material

But there’s also more where Angel Of My Dreams came from. Headache melds an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with song sections that present a nearly discordant style of rhythmic music or are enfolded by deep reverberation. She offers Unconditional to her mother: it has a fabulous melody, eighties-style electronic percussion, and crashing rock guitar allied to metallic pounding beats. IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the sound of early 00s electroclash, or rather the thrilling strain of early 00s pop that was heavily influenced by electroclash, while Natural at Disaster starts out like a keyboard-led emotional song before unexpectedly swerving into a dark computerized noise.

An Appealing Presence

The artist on stage is a immensely likable, cheerily unvarnished figure: she is, she announces at one point, “trembling uncontrollably”; giving a shoutout to her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are present in large numbers, she proposes showing appreciation by including a official undergarment to the merch stand.

Future Possibilities

It may well end the manner such individual artistic pursuits end – the enmity towards ex-group member Jesy Nelson voiced within Natural at Disaster patched up, a press conference to announce that Little Mix are back – but the reality that the entire audience appear knowing every lyric as they sing along to a record that only came out a month ago makes you wonder. And should it occur, the closing Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Jade's individual musical path is unlikely to recede into the realms of the dimly remembered placeholder.

• Jade performs at the Manchester venue O2 Victoria Warehouse in the city of Manchester tonight and is touring the UK through October 23rd.