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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 toughened-up R&B sound, replete with at least one single featuring a guest appearance by an American rapper, or a lunge towards mature mainstream-approved smooth pop-rock territory – and they usually amount to a barely recalled interim project, 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 currently taken by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She’s certainly not above engaging in the typical activities that ex-reality TV group artists are known for undertaking, including loudly underlining that she's free from the media-trained constraints of the manufactured pop industry – judging by tonight’s crowd, 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 Gossip, her collaboration 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 the norm.

A Superb Debut

She launched her individual career with last year’s superb Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jarring and fragmented mixture 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 demonstrates, not everything on her first full-length release her album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as her debut single: the track Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it’s also typical dancefloor-oriented pop, driven by exactly the Supremes sample its title suggests; things are padded out with a cover of the Madonna classic Frozen that transforms into a medley of nineties club anthems, from 808’s Pacific State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.

Additional Fascinating Content

But there’s also more material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. The song Headache combines an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with song sections that present a nearly discordant style of rhythmic music or are enfolded by deep reverberation. She offers Unconditional to her mum: it features a fabulous melody, eighties-style electronic percussion, and crashing rock guitar allied to metallic pounding beats. IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the sound of early 00s electroclash, or more accurately the thrilling strain of early 00s pop that was strongly inspired by electroclash, while the track Natural at Disaster starts out like a keyboard-led emotional song before suddenly shifting into a dark computerized noise.

An Appealing Presence

The artist on stage is a hugely appealing, cheerily unvarnished figure: she is, she announces at one point, “trembling uncontrollably”; shouting out her queer audience members, who are present in large numbers, she suggests showing appreciation by including a official undergarment to the merchandise booth.

What Lies Ahead

It could conclude the way these kind of solo careers end – the enmity towards ex-group member her previous colleague Jesy Nelson expressed in 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 sing along to an album that was released just a few weeks prior makes you wonder. And even if it does, the final Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Thirlwall’s solo career is unlikely to recede into the realms of the dimly remembered placeholder.

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