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With the exception of Harry Styles, the solo careers of former members of televised singing competition groups rarely capture the public imagination. They usually follow predictable patterns – often a pursuit at a more edgy urban music style, replete with at least one single including a guest appearance by an American rapper, or a move into mature mainstream-approved polished adult contemporary – and they typically become a barely recalled interim project, the visual and auditory experience of someone gamely killing time before the inevitable band comeback concerts.

A Unique Journey

It’s a state of affairs that makes the idiosyncratic path currently taken by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She definitely participates in engaging in the typical activities that ex-reality TV group artists are known for undertaking, among them loudly underlining that she's free from the press-managed restrictions of the factory-produced music business – judging by the audience this evening, the top-selling product on the official goods stand is a handheld cooling device emblazoned with the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from Gossip, her musical partnership with electronic pair the group Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the music she’s opted to make 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 mixture of grand emotional pop songs, loud electronic instruments and samples from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

As the set on her first solo tour demonstrates, not every song on her debut album her album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as that: Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it’s also typical dancefloor-oriented pop, powered by precisely the Motown musical snippet the name implies; things are padded out with a cover of the Madonna classic Frozen that devolves into a musical compilation 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. Headache combines an Abba-esque chorus with verses that offer a nearly discordant brand of funk or are surrounded with cavernous echo. She dedicates Unconditional to her mum: it features a fabulous melody, early 80s syndrums, and powerful guitar riffs combined with clanging industrial drums. IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the musical aesthetic of early 00s electroclash, or more accurately the thrilling strain of millennium-era popular music that was strongly inspired by the electroclash genre, while the track Natural at Disaster starts out like a piano ballad before suddenly shifting into a dark computerized noise.

A Charming Performer

The woman at its centre is a immensely likable, cheerily unvarnished figure: she is, she states at one point, “trembling uncontrollably”; giving a shoutout to her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are here in force, she suggests showing appreciation by including a official undergarment to the merchandise booth.

Future Possibilities

It may well end the way these kind of solo careers end – the enmity towards former bandmate her previous colleague Jesy Nelson voiced within Natural at Disaster resolved, a press conference to announce that Little Mix are reunited – but the fact that every attendee appear knowing every lyric as they join in vocally to a record that was released just a few weeks prior makes you wonder. And even if it does, the final Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Thirlwall’s solo career is not destined to fade into the domain of the dimly remembered placeholder.

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