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Harry Styles aside, the solo careers of former members 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 US hip-hop artist, or a lunge towards “grownup” 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

It’s a state of affairs that makes the idiosyncratic path thus far followed by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She definitely participates in engaging in the typical activities that former talent show band members are known for undertaking, including loudly underlining that she’s no longer subject the press-managed restrictions of the factory-produced music business – judging by tonight’s crowd, the top-selling product on the official goods stand is a fan emblazoned with the phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from the track Gossip, her musical partnership 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 the norm.

An Impressive First Single

She opened her solo account with last year’s superb her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jarring and disjointed melange of big pop balladry, noisy synthesisers and audio excerpts from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

As the set on her first solo tour demonstrates, not everything on her debut album her album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as her debut single: the track Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it’s also standard-issue disco pop, powered by exactly the Motown musical snippet the name implies; the show is extended with a interpretation of the Madonna classic Frozen that transforms into a musical compilation of nineties club anthems, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.

More Intriguing Material

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 nearly discordant style of rhythmic music or are enfolded by cavernous echo. She offers the track Unconditional to her mum: it features a wonderful tune, early 80s syndrums, and powerful guitar riffs combined with clanging industrial drums. IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the musical aesthetic of 2000s electronic punk movement, or more accurately the exciting variation of early 00s pop that was strongly inspired by the electroclash genre, while Natural at Disaster starts out like a keyboard-led emotional song before unexpectedly swerving into a malevolent electronic grind.

An Appealing Presence

The woman at its centre is a hugely appealing, cheerily unvarnished presence: she declares, she states at one point, “shaking like a shitting dog”; shouting out her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are here in force, she proposes thanking them by adding a official undergarment to the merchandise booth.

Future Possibilities

It may well end the way such individual artistic pursuits typically finish – the enmity towards ex-group member Jesy Nelson expressed in the song Natural at Disaster resolved, a press conference to announce that Little Mix are reunited – but the reality that the entire audience seem to be knowing every lyric as they join in vocally to an album that only came out a few weeks prior makes you wonder. And should it occur, the final Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Jade's individual musical path is unlikely to recede into the realms of the dimly remembered placeholder.

• Jade performs at the O2 Victoria Warehouse in the city of Manchester this evening and is touring the UK until 23 October.