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With the exception of Harry Styles, the solo careers of former members of TV talent show-manufactured bands rarely capture the audience's attention. They usually follow certain rules – often a pursuit at a more edgy urban music style, complete with at least a track featuring a guest appearance by an American rapper, or a lunge towards mature mainstream-approved polished adult contemporary – and they typically become a barely recalled interim project, the sight and sound of someone enthusiastically passing the years prior to the unavoidable reunion tour.

An Idiosyncratic Path

This common scenario that renders the unconventional route currently taken by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall surprisingly refreshing. She definitely participates in engaging in the typical activities 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 manufactured pop industry – based on the audience this evening, the most popular item on the merchandise stall is a handheld cooling device emblazoned with the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from Gossip, her musical partnership with electronic pair 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 Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jarring and disjointed melange of big pop balladry, loud electronic instruments and samples from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

During the performance on her first solo tour proves, not every song on her first full-length release her album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as that: the track Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it’s also standard-issue disco pop, driven by exactly the Motown musical snippet the name implies; the show is extended with a cover of Madonna’s Frozen that transforms into a medley of nineties club anthems, from 808’s Pacific 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 catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with song sections that offer a borderline atonal style of rhythmic music or are enfolded by cavernous echo. She dedicates the track Unconditional to her mum: it has a fabulous melody, early 80s syndrums, and crashing rock guitar allied to clanging industrial drums. The song IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the musical aesthetic of early 00s electroclash, or rather the exciting variation of early 00s pop that was heavily influenced by electroclash, while the track Natural at Disaster starts out like a piano ballad before suddenly shifting into a malevolent electronic grind.

A Charming Performer

The woman at its centre is a immensely likable, cheerily unvarnished presence: she declares, she announces at one point, “shaking like a shitting dog”; giving a shoutout to her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are here in force, she suggests thanking them by including a branded jockstrap to the merchandise booth.

What Lies Ahead

It could conclude the manner these kind of solo careers typically finish – the enmity towards former bandmate Jesy Nelson voiced within Natural at Disaster resolved, a media announcement to announce that Little Mix are back – but the reality that the entire audience appear word-perfect as they sing along to a record that only came out a few weeks prior makes you wonder. And even if it does, the final Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Thirlwall’s solo career is unlikely to recede into the domain of the dimly remembered placeholder.

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