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Harry Styles aside, individual artistic journeys of ex-participants of TV talent show-manufactured bands seldom grip the public imagination. They usually follow certain rules – either an attempt at a more edgy urban music style, replete with at least a track featuring a guest appearance by an US hip-hop artist, or a move into mature Radio 2-friendly smooth pop-rock territory – and they usually amount to a dimly remembered placeholder, the sight and sound of someone gamely killing time before the inevitable reunion tour.

An Idiosyncratic Path

This common scenario that renders the unconventional route thus far followed by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She definitely participates in engaging in the typical activities that ex-reality TV group artists are wont to do, including emphatically stating that she's free from the media-trained constraints of the manufactured pop industry – based on the audience this evening, the most popular item on the official goods stand is a handheld cooling device emblazoned with the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from the track Gossip, her collaboration with electronic pair the group Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the songs she has chosen to create is pop music with a far more fascinating style than the norm.

An Impressive First Single

She opened her solo account with last year’s superb Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jarring and disjointed melange of big pop balladry, loud electronic instruments and samples 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 equally fascinating as her debut single: the track Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it’s also typical dancefloor-oriented pop, powered by exactly the Motown musical snippet the name implies; the show is extended with a cover of Madonna’s Frozen that devolves into a musical compilation of nineties club anthems, from 808’s Pacific State to Set You Free by N-Trance.

Additional Fascinating Content

However, there exists additional material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. Headache melds an Abba-esque chorus with verses that present a borderline atonal style of rhythmic music or are enfolded by deep reverberation. She offers Unconditional to her mum: it has a wonderful tune, eighties-style electronic percussion, and powerful guitar riffs combined with clanging industrial drums. The song IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the musical aesthetic of 2000s electronic punk movement, or more accurately the thrilling strain of early 00s pop that was strongly inspired by electroclash, 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 a certain moment, “trembling uncontrollably”; giving a shoutout to her queer audience members, who are here in force, she suggests showing appreciation by including a branded jockstrap to the merch stand.

What Lies Ahead

It may well end the way these kind of solo careers typically finish – the hostility towards ex-group member Jesy Nelson voiced within Natural at Disaster patched up, a press conference to declare that Little Mix are back – but the reality that the entire audience seem to be word-perfect as they join in vocally to an album that only came out a few weeks prior makes you wonder. And should it occur, the closing performance of Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Thirlwall’s solo career is unlikely to recede into the domain of the dimly remembered placeholder.

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