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With the exception of Harry Styles, individual artistic journeys of former members of TV talent show-manufactured bands rarely capture the public imagination. These efforts typically adhere to certain rules – often a pursuit at a more edgy urban music style, replete with at least one single featuring a cameo by an American rapper, or a lunge towards mature Radio 2-friendly polished adult contemporary – and they typically become a barely recalled interim project, the visual and auditory experience of someone enthusiastically passing the years before the inevitable band comeback concerts.

A Unique Journey

It’s a state of affairs that renders the unconventional route currently taken by Little Mix’s 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 emphatically stating that she’s no longer subject the press-managed restrictions of the factory-produced music business – based on tonight’s crowd, the top-selling product on the official goods stand is a fan displaying the phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from 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 the norm.

An Impressive First Single

She opened her solo account with last year’s superb Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, 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 first solo tour demonstrates, not every song on her debut album her album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as her debut single: Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it’s also standard-issue disco pop, driven by exactly the Motown musical snippet its title suggests; things are padded out with a cover of the Madonna classic Frozen that devolves into a musical compilation of 90s dance hits, from 808’s Pacific State to Set You Free by N-Trance.

More Intriguing Material

But there’s also more material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. Headache melds an Abba-esque chorus with verses that present a borderline atonal style of rhythmic music or are enfolded by deep reverberation. She offers Unconditional to her mother: it has a fabulous melody, eighties-style electronic percussion, and powerful guitar riffs combined with metallic pounding beats. IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the sound of 2000s electronic punk movement, or more accurately the thrilling strain of millennium-era popular music that was heavily influenced by electroclash, while Natural at Disaster begins like a piano ballad before suddenly shifting into a dark computerized noise.

An Appealing Presence

The woman at its centre is a hugely appealing, delightfully authentic figure: she is, she announces at a certain moment, “shaking like a shitting dog”; shouting out her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are present in large numbers, she proposes showing appreciation by including a branded jockstrap to the merch stand.

What Lies Ahead

It could conclude the manner such individual artistic pursuits end – the enmity towards former bandmate her previous colleague Jesy Nelson expressed in the song Natural at Disaster patched up, a press conference to announce that the original group are back – but the fact that every attendee seem to be word-perfect as they sing along to a record that was released just a month ago makes you wonder. And even if it does, the final performance of Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Jade's individual musical path is unlikely to recede into the realms of the dimly remembered placeholder.

• Jade performs at the O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester this evening and is traveling across the United Kingdom until 23 October.