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Harry Styles aside, individual artistic journeys of former members of televised singing competition groups rarely capture the public imagination. These efforts typically adhere to certain rules – either an attempt at a more edgy urban music style, complete with at least a track featuring a cameo by an American rapper, or a move into mature Radio 2-friendly smooth pop-rock territory – and they typically become a dimly remembered placeholder, the sight and sound of someone enthusiastically passing the years 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 definitely participates in engaging in the typical activities that former talent show band members are wont to do, among them emphatically stating that she’s no longer subject the press-managed restrictions of the manufactured pop industry – judging by the audience this evening, the most popular item on the merchandise stall is a handheld cooling device emblazoned with the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line 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 usual.

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 fragmented mixture of grand emotional pop songs, loud electronic instruments and audio excerpts from the classic track Puppet On A String by Sandie Shaw.

As the set on her first solo tour proves, not everything on her debut album 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 equally typical dancefloor-oriented pop, driven by exactly the Motown musical snippet its title suggests; the show is extended with a cover of Madonna’s Frozen that transforms into a medley of nineties club anthems, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.

More Intriguing Material

However, there exists additional material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. Headache combines an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with song sections that offer a borderline atonal style of rhythmic music or are surrounded with cavernous echo. She offers the track Unconditional to her mum: it features a fabulous melody, early 80s syndrums, and powerful guitar riffs allied to metallic pounding beats. The song IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the musical aesthetic of 2000s electronic punk movement, 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 begins like a keyboard-led emotional song before unexpectedly swerving into a dark computerized noise.

An Appealing Presence

The woman at its centre is a immensely likable, cheerily unvarnished figure: she is, she announces at a certain moment, “trembling uncontrollably”; giving a shoutout to her queer audience members, who are present in large numbers, she proposes thanking them by including a official undergarment to the merch stand.

What Lies Ahead

It may well end the way such individual artistic pursuits end – the enmity towards former bandmate her previous colleague Jesy Nelson expressed in the song Natural at Disaster resolved, a media announcement to declare that Little Mix are reunited – but the reality that the entire audience appear knowing every lyric as they join in vocally to an album that was released just a month ago makes you wonder. And should it occur, the final performance of Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Thirlwall’s solo career is not destined to fade into the domain of the barely recalled interim project.

• Jade performs at the Manchester venue O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester tonight and is touring the UK through October 23rd.