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With the exception of Harry Styles, the solo careers of ex-participants of televised singing competition groups seldom grip 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 including a cameo by an American rapper, or a lunge towards “grownup” Radio 2-friendly polished adult contemporary – and they usually amount to 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 makes the idiosyncratic path currently taken by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall surprisingly refreshing. She’s certainly not above doing the kind of things that former talent show band members are known for undertaking, among them loudly underlining that she's free from the media-trained constraints of the factory-produced music business – judging by the audience this evening, the most popular item on the merchandise stall is a fan emblazoned with the phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from the track Gossip, her musical partnership 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.

A Superb Debut

She launched her individual career with last year’s superb Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jolting and disjointed melange of big pop balladry, noisy synthesisers and audio excerpts from the classic track Puppet On A String by Sandie Shaw.

As the set on her first solo tour demonstrates, not every song on her debut album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as that: the track Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it's equally standard-issue disco pop, driven by precisely the Motown musical snippet the name implies; things are padded out with a interpretation of the Madonna classic Frozen that transforms into a medley of nineties club anthems, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to Set You Free by N-Trance.

Additional Fascinating Content

But there’s also more where Angel Of My Dreams came from. Headache combines an Abba-esque chorus with verses that present a nearly discordant brand of funk or are enfolded by deep reverberation. She offers Unconditional to her mum: it features a wonderful tune, early 80s syndrums, and powerful guitar riffs allied to metallic pounding beats. The song IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the sound of 2000s electronic punk movement, or more accurately the thrilling strain of early 00s pop that was heavily influenced by the electroclash genre, while Natural at Disaster begins like a keyboard-led emotional song before suddenly shifting into a malevolent electronic grind.

A Charming Performer

The woman at its centre is a immensely likable, cheerily unvarnished presence: she declares, she states at a certain moment, “shaking like a shitting dog”; shouting out her queer audience members, who are here in force, she proposes showing appreciation by including a branded jockstrap to the merch stand.

Future Possibilities

It may well end the manner these kind of solo careers end – the hostility towards former bandmate her previous colleague Jesy Nelson voiced within the song Natural at Disaster resolved, a press conference to announce that the original group are back – but the reality that the entire audience seem to be word-perfect as they sing along to a record that only came out a month ago makes you wonder. And even if it does, the final Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Jade's individual musical path is not destined to fade into the domain of the barely recalled interim project.

• Jade plays the O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester this evening and is traveling across the United Kingdom through October 23rd.