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Harry Styles aside, individual artistic journeys of former members of televised singing competition groups rarely capture the audience's attention. They usually follow predictable patterns – often a pursuit at a more edgy urban music style, replete with at least one single including a cameo by an US hip-hop artist, or a move into “grownup” mainstream-approved smooth pop-rock territory – and they typically become a dimly remembered placeholder, the sight and sound of someone gamely killing time prior to the unavoidable reunion tour.

An Idiosyncratic Path

It’s a state of affairs that renders the unconventional route thus far followed by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She definitely participates in doing the kind of things 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 factory-produced music business – judging by the audience this evening, the top-selling product on the official goods stand is a handheld cooling device displaying the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from Gossip, her musical partnership with dance duo Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the songs she has chosen to create is pop of a noticeably more intriguing stripe than the norm.

An Impressive First Single

She opened her solo account with last year’s superb Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jolting and fragmented melange of big pop balladry, 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 debut album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as that: Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it's equally standard-issue disco pop, driven by precisely the Supremes sample the name implies; the show is extended with a cover of the Madonna classic 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 material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. Headache melds an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with song sections that present a nearly discordant style of rhythmic music or are surrounded with deep reverberation. She dedicates the track Unconditional to her mother: it has a fabulous melody, early 80s syndrums, and powerful guitar riffs allied to clanging industrial drums. IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the musical aesthetic of 2000s electronic punk movement, or rather the thrilling strain of millennium-era popular music that was strongly inspired by electroclash, while the track Natural at Disaster begins like a keyboard-led emotional song before unexpectedly swerving into a malevolent electronic grind.

An Appealing Presence

The artist on stage is a immensely likable, cheerily unvarnished figure: she is, she announces at one point, “shaking like a shitting dog”; giving a shoutout to her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are here in force, she proposes showing appreciation by adding a official undergarment to the merch stand.

What Lies Ahead

It may well end the manner such individual artistic pursuits end – the hostility towards ex-group member her previous colleague Jesy Nelson expressed in Natural at Disaster resolved, a press conference to declare that Little Mix are reunited – but the reality that the entire audience appear word-perfect as they join in vocally to an album that was released just a few weeks prior causes one to ponder. And even if it does, the closing Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Jade's individual musical path is not destined to fade into the realms of the barely recalled interim project.

• Jade performs at the Manchester venue O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester this evening and is traveling across the United Kingdom until 23 October.