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Harry Styles aside, the solo careers of former members of TV talent show-manufactured bands seldom grip the public imagination. They usually follow certain rules – often a pursuit at a toughened-up R&B sound, replete with at least one single including a cameo by an American rapper, or a lunge towards mature Radio 2-friendly polished adult contemporary – and they typically become a barely recalled interim project, the sight and sound of someone enthusiastically passing the years before the inevitable reunion tour.

A Unique Journey

It’s a state of affairs that makes the idiosyncratic path thus far followed by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall surprisingly refreshing. She definitely participates in doing the kind of things that former talent show band members are wont to do, among them loudly underlining that she's free from the media-trained constraints of the factory-produced music business – based on the audience this evening, the most popular item on the official goods stand is a handheld cooling device displaying the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from the track Gossip, her collaboration with dance duo the group Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the music she’s opted to make is pop music with a far more fascinating style than usual.

A Superb Debut

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

As the set on her first solo tour proves, not everything on her debut album her album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as her debut single: Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it's equally typical dancefloor-oriented pop, powered by precisely the Motown musical snippet its title suggests; things are padded out with a cover 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.

Additional Fascinating Content

But there’s also more where Angel Of My Dreams came from. The song Headache melds an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with verses that present a borderline atonal brand of funk or are enfolded by cavernous echo. She offers the track 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 early 00s electroclash, or rather the thrilling strain of early 00s pop that was heavily influenced by the electroclash genre, while the track Natural at Disaster begins like a piano ballad before suddenly shifting into a dark computerized noise.

An Appealing Presence

The artist on stage is a hugely appealing, cheerily unvarnished figure: she declares, she announces at one point, “trembling uncontrollably”; giving a shoutout to her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are present in large numbers, she suggests showing appreciation by adding a branded jockstrap to the merchandise booth.

What Lies Ahead

It may well end the manner these kind of solo careers end – the hostility towards ex-group member Jesy Nelson expressed in Natural at Disaster patched up, a media announcement to declare that Little Mix are back – but the reality that the entire audience appear word-perfect as they join in vocally to a record that was released just a month ago makes you wonder. And even if it does, the closing 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.