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Harry Styles aside, the solo careers of former members of TV talent show-manufactured bands rarely capture the audience's attention. These efforts typically adhere to predictable patterns – often a pursuit at a toughened-up R&B sound, complete with at least a track featuring a guest appearance by an US hip-hop artist, or a lunge towards mature mainstream-approved smooth pop-rock territory – and they typically become a barely recalled interim project, the visual and auditory experience of someone enthusiastically passing the years prior to the unavoidable band comeback concerts.

An Idiosyncratic Path

This common scenario that renders the unconventional route thus far followed by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall surprisingly refreshing. She’s certainly not above engaging in the typical activities that ex-reality TV group artists are wont to do, including emphatically stating that she's free from the press-managed restrictions of the factory-produced music business – judging by the audience this evening, the top-selling product 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 collaboration with dance duo the group Confidence Man – but regardless, the music she’s opted to make is pop of a noticeably more intriguing stripe 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 disjointed melange of big pop balladry, noisy synthesisers and samples from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

During the performance on her first solo tour proves, not everything on her debut album her album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as her debut single: the track Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it's equally typical dancefloor-oriented pop, powered by precisely the Motown musical snippet the name implies; things are padded out with a interpretation of Madonna’s Frozen that devolves into a medley of 90s dance hits, from 808’s Pacific State to Set You Free by N-Trance.

More Intriguing Material

However, there exists additional where Angel Of My Dreams came from. The song Headache combines an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with verses that offer a nearly discordant brand of funk or are surrounded with cavernous echo. She offers the track Unconditional to her mum: it has a fabulous melody, early 80s syndrums, and crashing rock guitar allied to metallic pounding beats. IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the sound of early 00s electroclash, or rather the exciting variation of early 00s pop that was heavily influenced by electroclash, while Natural at Disaster starts out like a keyboard-led emotional song before suddenly shifting into a dark computerized noise.

A Charming Performer

The woman at its centre is a hugely appealing, cheerily unvarnished presence: she is, she states at one point, “shaking like a shitting dog”; giving a shoutout to her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are here in force, she suggests thanking them by adding a branded jockstrap to the merchandise booth.

Future Possibilities

It could conclude the way these kind of solo careers typically finish – the enmity towards former bandmate her previous colleague Jesy Nelson voiced within the song Natural at Disaster patched up, a media announcement to announce that the original group are back – but the reality that the entire audience appear knowing every lyric as they join in vocally to an album that was released just a few weeks prior makes you wonder. And even if it does, the closing Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Jade's individual musical path is unlikely to recede into the domain of the dimly remembered placeholder.

• Jade plays the Manchester venue O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester tonight and is traveling across the United Kingdom until 23 October.