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Harry Styles aside, the solo careers of ex-participants of televised singing competition groups rarely capture the audience's attention. These efforts typically adhere to certain rules – often a pursuit at a toughened-up R&B sound, replete with at least a track featuring a guest appearance by an American rapper, or a lunge towards mature mainstream-approved smooth pop-rock territory – and they typically become a barely recalled interim project, 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 currently taken by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall surprisingly refreshing. She’s certainly not above engaging in the typical activities 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 manufactured pop industry – judging by tonight’s crowd, the most popular item on the merchandise stall is a fan displaying the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from Gossip, her musical partnership with electronic pair Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the music she’s opted to make is pop music with a far more fascinating style than the norm.

A Superb Debut

She launched her individual career with the previous year's excellent her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jolting and disjointed mixture of grand emotional pop songs, loud electronic instruments and audio excerpts from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

As the set on her first solo tour proves, not every song on her debut album her album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as her debut single: the track Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it’s also typical dancefloor-oriented pop, powered by precisely the Motown musical snippet its title suggests; the show is extended with a cover of the Madonna classic Frozen that devolves into a musical compilation of 90s dance hits, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to Set You Free by N-Trance.

Additional Fascinating Content

However, there exists additional where Angel Of My Dreams came from. The song Headache melds an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with song sections that present a borderline atonal brand of funk or are surrounded with deep reverberation. She dedicates the track Unconditional to her mum: it has a fabulous melody, early 80s syndrums, and crashing rock guitar combined with metallic pounding beats. The song IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the sound of early 00s electroclash, or more accurately the exciting variation of early 00s pop that was heavily influenced by electroclash, while Natural at Disaster begins like a keyboard-led emotional song before unexpectedly swerving into a dark computerized noise.

An Appealing Presence

The artist on stage is a immensely likable, cheerily unvarnished presence: she is, she announces at one point, “shaking like a shitting dog”; giving a shoutout to her queer audience members, who are present in large numbers, she suggests thanking them by including a branded jockstrap to the merch stand.

What Lies Ahead

It may well end the manner these kind of solo careers typically finish – the enmity towards former bandmate Jesy Nelson voiced within Natural at Disaster patched up, a press conference to declare that the original group are reunited – but the reality that the entire audience seem to be word-perfect as they sing along to an album that was released just a few weeks prior makes you wonder. And even if it does, the final Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Thirlwall’s solo career is unlikely to recede into the domain of the barely recalled interim project.

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