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With the exception of Harry Styles, the solo careers of ex-participants of TV talent show-manufactured bands rarely capture the audience's attention. These efforts typically adhere to certain rules – either an attempt at a more edgy urban music style, complete with at least a track including 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 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 surprisingly refreshing. She definitely participates in doing the kind of things that former talent show band members are known for undertaking, among them loudly underlining that she's free from the media-trained constraints of the manufactured pop industry – based on the audience this evening, the top-selling product on the official goods stand is a fan emblazoned with the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from Gossip, her musical partnership with dance duo Confidence Man – but regardless, the music she’s opted to make is pop of a noticeably more intriguing stripe than the norm.

A Superb Debut

She launched her individual career with the previous year's excellent Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jolting and fragmented melange of grand emotional pop songs, loud electronic instruments and audio excerpts from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

During the performance on her first solo tour proves, not every song on her debut album her album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as that: the track Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it's equally standard-issue disco pop, powered by precisely the Supremes sample its title suggests; the show is extended with a cover of the Madonna classic Frozen that devolves into a medley of nineties club anthems, from 808’s Pacific State to Set You Free by N-Trance.

More Intriguing Material

However, there exists additional where Angel Of My Dreams came from. Headache melds an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with song sections that offer a borderline atonal style of rhythmic music or are surrounded with deep reverberation. She offers Unconditional to her mum: it features a wonderful tune, eighties-style electronic percussion, and powerful guitar riffs combined with metallic pounding beats. The song IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the sound of 2000s electronic punk movement, or more accurately the exciting variation of millennium-era popular music that was heavily influenced by the electroclash genre, while Natural at Disaster begins like a keyboard-led emotional song before suddenly shifting into a malevolent electronic grind.

An Appealing Presence

The woman at its centre is a immensely likable, delightfully authentic presence: she is, she states at a certain moment, “shaking like a shitting dog”; shouting out her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are here in force, she proposes showing appreciation by adding a official undergarment to the merch stand.

Future Possibilities

It could conclude the way such individual artistic pursuits end – the hostility towards ex-group member Jesy Nelson expressed in the song Natural at Disaster patched up, a media announcement to announce that Little Mix are reunited – but the fact that the entire audience seem to be word-perfect as they sing along to an album that was released just a few weeks prior makes you wonder. And even if it does, the final performance of Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Thirlwall’s solo career is not destined to fade into the realms of the barely recalled interim project.

• Jade plays the Manchester venue O2 Victoria Warehouse in the city of Manchester this evening and is traveling across the United Kingdom until 23 October.