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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 public imagination. They usually follow predictable patterns – either an attempt at a more edgy urban music style, replete with at least a track including a guest appearance by an American rapper, or a move into “grownup” mainstream-approved smooth pop-rock territory – and they usually amount to a dimly remembered placeholder, the sight and sound of someone enthusiastically passing the years prior to the unavoidable 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 ex-reality TV group artists are known for undertaking, including 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 official goods stand is a handheld cooling device displaying the phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from 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 the previous year's excellent Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jarring and fragmented melange of grand emotional pop songs, noisy synthesisers and audio excerpts from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

During the performance on her first solo tour proves, not every song on her debut album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as that: Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it’s also standard-issue disco pop, driven by precisely the Motown musical snippet the name implies; things are padded out with a cover of Madonna’s Frozen that transforms into a medley of nineties club anthems, from 808’s Pacific State to Set You Free by N-Trance.

More Intriguing Material

But there’s also more where Angel Of My Dreams came from. The song Headache melds an Abba-esque chorus with song sections that present a nearly discordant style of rhythmic music or are surrounded with cavernous echo. She dedicates the track Unconditional to her mum: it features a wonderful tune, eighties-style electronic percussion, and powerful guitar riffs combined with clanging industrial drums. IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the musical aesthetic of early 00s electroclash, or more accurately the exciting variation of millennium-era popular music that was strongly inspired by the electroclash genre, while the track Natural at Disaster starts out like a piano ballad before suddenly shifting into a malevolent electronic grind.

A Charming Performer

The woman at its centre is a hugely appealing, delightfully authentic figure: she is, she announces at one point, “trembling uncontrollably”; giving a shoutout to her queer audience members, who are here in force, she suggests thanking them by adding a branded jockstrap to the merchandise booth.

Future Possibilities

It may well end the manner such individual artistic pursuits typically finish – the hostility towards former bandmate Jesy Nelson expressed in the song Natural at Disaster patched up, a media announcement to declare that Little Mix are reunited – but the reality that every attendee 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 should it occur, the final performance of Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Jade's individual musical path 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 tonight and is touring the UK through October 23rd.