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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 public imagination. These efforts typically adhere to certain rules – often a pursuit at a more edgy urban music style, complete with at least one single 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 makes the idiosyncratic path thus far followed by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She’s certainly not above doing the kind of things that former talent show band members are wont to do, among them emphatically stating that she’s no longer subject the media-trained constraints of the manufactured pop industry – based on 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 song line from Gossip, her collaboration with electronic pair Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the music she’s opted to make 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 her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jolting and fragmented mixture 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 demonstrates, not every song on her debut album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as her debut single: Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it’s also standard-issue disco pop, powered by exactly the Supremes sample the name implies; the show is extended with a cover of the Madonna classic Frozen that transforms into a musical compilation 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 combines an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with verses that offer a borderline atonal brand of funk or are surrounded with cavernous echo. She offers the track Unconditional to her mother: it has a wonderful tune, early 80s syndrums, and crashing rock guitar allied to metallic pounding beats. IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the sound of early 00s electroclash, or rather the thrilling strain of early 00s pop that was heavily influenced by the electroclash genre, while Natural at Disaster starts out like a piano ballad before unexpectedly swerving into a malevolent electronic grind.

A Charming Performer

The artist on stage is a immensely likable, cheerily unvarnished figure: she declares, she states at a certain moment, “trembling uncontrollably”; giving a shoutout to her queer audience members, who are here in force, she suggests thanking them by including a official undergarment to the merchandise booth.

Future Possibilities

It may well end the way these kind of solo careers end – the hostility towards ex-group member Jesy Nelson expressed in the song Natural at Disaster resolved, a press conference to declare that Little Mix are reunited – but the fact that the entire audience appear knowing every lyric as they join in vocally to an album that only came out a few weeks prior causes one to ponder. And should it occur, the closing performance of Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Thirlwall’s solo career is not destined to fade into the domain of the dimly remembered placeholder.

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