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With the exception of Harry Styles, the solo careers of ex-participants of TV talent show-manufactured bands seldom grip the audience's attention. These efforts typically adhere to predictable patterns – often a pursuit 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 move into mature mainstream-approved polished adult contemporary – and they usually amount to a dimly remembered placeholder, the visual and auditory experience of someone gamely killing time prior to the unavoidable band comeback concerts.

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 definitely participates in engaging in the typical activities that former talent show band members are known for undertaking, including emphatically stating that she’s no longer subject the press-managed restrictions of the manufactured pop industry – based on tonight’s crowd, the most popular item on the merchandise stall is a fan displaying the phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from the track Gossip, her musical partnership with dance duo the group Confidence Man – but regardless, the songs she has chosen to create is pop of a noticeably more intriguing stripe than usual.

A Superb Debut

She opened her solo account with the previous year's excellent her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jarring and fragmented melange of grand emotional pop songs, loud electronic instruments and samples from the classic track Puppet On A String by Sandie Shaw.

As the set on her first solo tour proves, not everything on her first full-length release That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as that: the track Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it's equally typical dancefloor-oriented pop, driven by exactly the Supremes sample its title suggests; the show is extended with a cover of Madonna’s Frozen that transforms into a musical compilation of 90s dance hits, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to Set You Free by N-Trance.

Additional Fascinating Content

But there’s also more material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. Headache combines an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with verses that offer a borderline atonal style of rhythmic music or are enfolded by cavernous echo. She dedicates Unconditional to her mum: it features a fabulous melody, early 80s syndrums, and powerful guitar riffs allied to metallic pounding beats. IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the musical aesthetic of early 00s electroclash, or more accurately the exciting variation of millennium-era popular music that was heavily influenced by the electroclash genre, while the track Natural at Disaster begins like a piano ballad before unexpectedly swerving into a malevolent electronic grind.

An Appealing Presence

The artist on stage is a hugely appealing, cheerily unvarnished figure: she declares, she announces at a certain moment, “shaking like a shitting dog”; shouting out her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are present in large numbers, she proposes showing appreciation by including a branded jockstrap to the merchandise booth.

Future Possibilities

It may well end the way such individual artistic pursuits typically finish – the enmity towards former bandmate Jesy Nelson expressed in the song Natural at Disaster resolved, a press conference to declare that the original group are reunited – but the fact that every attendee appear knowing every lyric as they sing along to an album that only came out a few weeks prior causes one to ponder. And should it occur, the final performance of Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Thirlwall’s solo career is not destined to fade into the domain of the barely recalled interim project.

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