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With the exception of Harry Styles, individual artistic journeys of former members of TV talent show-manufactured bands seldom grip the public imagination. These efforts typically adhere to predictable patterns – either an attempt at a toughened-up R&B sound, replete with at least one single featuring a guest appearance by an American rapper, or a lunge towards “grownup” 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.

A Unique Journey

This common scenario that makes the idiosyncratic path currently taken by Little Mix’s 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 loudly underlining that she's free from the press-managed restrictions of the factory-produced music business – judging by tonight’s crowd, the top-selling product on the merchandise stall is a fan displaying the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from the track Gossip, her collaboration with electronic pair the group Confidence Man – but regardless, the songs she has chosen to create is pop music with a far more fascinating style than the norm.

A Superb Debut

She opened her solo account with last year’s superb her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jarring and fragmented melange of grand emotional pop songs, noisy synthesisers and audio excerpts from the classic track Puppet On A String by Sandie Shaw.

During the performance on her first solo tour proves, not every song on her debut album her album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as that: the track Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it's equally standard-issue disco pop, driven by exactly the Supremes sample the name implies; the show is extended with a interpretation of Madonna’s Frozen that transforms into a medley of 90s dance hits, from 808’s Pacific State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.

Additional Fascinating Content

However, there exists additional material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. Headache melds an Abba-esque chorus with verses that present a nearly discordant brand of funk or are enfolded by cavernous echo. She offers the track Unconditional to her mum: it features a fabulous melody, early 80s syndrums, and powerful guitar riffs allied to clanging industrial drums. The song IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the musical aesthetic of early 00s electroclash, or rather the thrilling strain of early 00s pop that was strongly inspired by the electroclash genre, while the track Natural at Disaster starts out like a piano ballad before unexpectedly swerving into a malevolent electronic grind.

A Charming Performer

The woman at its centre is a immensely likable, cheerily unvarnished figure: she declares, she announces at a certain moment, “shaking like a shitting dog”; giving a shoutout to her queer audience members, who are present in large numbers, she proposes showing appreciation by adding a official undergarment to the merchandise booth.

What Lies Ahead

It may well end the way these kind of solo careers end – the hostility towards former bandmate Jesy Nelson expressed in the song Natural at Disaster resolved, a press conference to declare that Little Mix are reunited – but the fact that every attendee seem to be word-perfect as they join in vocally to an album that only came out a month ago causes one to ponder. And even if it does, the closing performance of Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Jade's individual musical path is not destined to fade into the realms of the dimly remembered placeholder.

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