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Harry Styles aside, individual artistic journeys of ex-participants of televised singing competition groups seldom grip the audience's attention. They usually follow certain rules – often a pursuit at a toughened-up R&B sound, replete with at least a track featuring a guest appearance by an American rapper, or a move into “grownup” Radio 2-friendly polished adult contemporary – and they usually amount to a dimly remembered placeholder, the visual and auditory experience of someone gamely killing time before the inevitable band comeback concerts.

A Unique Journey

This common scenario that renders the unconventional route thus far followed by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She’s certainly not above engaging in the typical activities that former talent show band members are wont to do, among them emphatically stating that she's free from the media-trained constraints of the manufactured pop industry – judging by tonight’s crowd, the top-selling product on the merchandise stall is a handheld cooling device displaying the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from Gossip, her collaboration with dance duo the group Confidence Man – but regardless, the songs she has chosen to create is pop music with a far more fascinating style than the norm.

A Superb Debut

She opened her solo account with last year’s superb Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jolting and fragmented melange of big pop balladry, noisy synthesisers 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 That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as that: the track Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it’s also standard-issue disco pop, powered by exactly the Motown musical snippet its title suggests; the show is extended with a interpretation of Madonna’s Frozen that transforms into a medley of 90s dance hits, 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 combines an Abba-esque chorus with song sections that offer a borderline atonal brand of funk or are surrounded with deep reverberation. She dedicates Unconditional to her mother: it has a wonderful tune, early 80s syndrums, and crashing rock guitar allied to metallic pounding beats. IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the musical aesthetic of 2000s electronic punk movement, or rather the exciting variation of early 00s pop that was heavily influenced by the electroclash genre, while the track Natural at Disaster begins like a piano ballad before suddenly shifting into a dark computerized noise.

A Charming Performer

The woman at its centre is a hugely appealing, cheerily unvarnished presence: she is, she announces at one point, “trembling uncontrollably”; giving a shoutout to her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are here in force, she suggests showing appreciation by including a branded jockstrap to the merchandise booth.

Future Possibilities

It could conclude the way these kind of solo careers typically finish – the enmity towards former bandmate Jesy Nelson expressed in the song Natural at Disaster resolved, a press conference to announce that the original group are reunited – but the reality that every attendee seem to be knowing every lyric as they join in vocally to a record 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 Jade's individual musical path is not destined to fade into the realms of the barely recalled interim project.

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