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Harry Styles aside, the solo careers of ex-participants of TV talent show-manufactured bands seldom grip the public imagination. They usually follow predictable patterns – often a pursuit at a toughened-up R&B sound, complete with at least a track featuring a guest appearance by an American rapper, or a move into “grownup” mainstream-approved smooth pop-rock territory – and they usually amount to a barely recalled interim project, the visual and auditory experience of someone gamely killing time before the inevitable reunion tour.

A Unique Journey

This common scenario that makes the idiosyncratic path currently taken 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 known for undertaking, including loudly underlining that she’s no longer subject the media-trained constraints of the manufactured pop industry – judging by the audience this evening, the most popular item on the official goods stand is a fan displaying the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from the track Gossip, her collaboration with electronic pair Confidence Man – but regardless, 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 the previous year's excellent her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jolting and fragmented mixture of grand emotional pop songs, loud electronic instruments and samples from the classic track Puppet On A String by Sandie Shaw.

As the set on her initial individual concert series demonstrates, not every song on her first full-length release her album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as her debut single: Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it’s also standard-issue disco pop, powered by exactly the Supremes sample its title suggests; 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 N-Trance’s Set You Free.

More Intriguing Material

But there’s also more material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. The song Headache combines an Abba-esque chorus with song sections that present a nearly discordant brand of funk or are surrounded with deep reverberation. She dedicates the track Unconditional to her mum: it has a wonderful tune, eighties-style electronic percussion, 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 thrilling strain of millennium-era popular music that was heavily influenced by the electroclash genre, while Natural at Disaster begins like a piano ballad before suddenly shifting into a dark computerized noise.

An Appealing Presence

The artist on stage is a immensely likable, delightfully authentic figure: she is, she announces at one point, “trembling uncontrollably”; shouting out her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are here in force, she suggests thanking them by including a branded jockstrap to the merchandise booth.

What Lies Ahead

It may well end the way such individual artistic pursuits typically finish – the hostility towards ex-group member her previous colleague Jesy Nelson voiced within the song Natural at Disaster patched up, a press conference to declare that the original group are reunited – but the fact that every attendee appear knowing every lyric as they join in vocally to a record that only came out a month ago causes one to ponder. And should it occur, 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 O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester tonight and is touring the UK through October 23rd.