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With the exception of Harry Styles, the solo careers of ex-participants of TV talent show-manufactured bands seldom grip the public imagination. These efforts typically adhere to certain rules – either an attempt at a more edgy urban music style, replete with at least one single featuring a cameo by an American rapper, or a lunge towards “grownup” Radio 2-friendly polished adult contemporary – and they typically become a barely recalled interim project, the sight and sound of someone enthusiastically passing the years before the inevitable band comeback concerts.

An Idiosyncratic Path

This common scenario that makes the idiosyncratic path currently taken by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She definitely participates in doing the kind of things that former talent show band members are wont to do, among them emphatically stating that she’s no longer subject the media-trained constraints of the factory-produced music business – judging by tonight’s crowd, the most popular item on the merchandise stall is a handheld cooling device displaying the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from Gossip, her collaboration with dance duo Confidence Man – but nevertheless, 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 Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jarring and fragmented mixture of big pop balladry, noisy synthesisers and samples from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

During the performance on her first solo tour demonstrates, not everything 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, powered by precisely the Supremes sample the name implies; things are padded out with a cover of the Madonna classic Frozen that transforms into a medley of 90s dance hits, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.

More Intriguing Material

However, there exists additional material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. 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 dedicates Unconditional to her mum: it features a fabulous melody, eighties-style electronic percussion, and crashing rock guitar allied to metallic pounding beats. IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the sound of 2000s electronic punk movement, or rather the exciting variation of millennium-era popular music that was heavily influenced by the electroclash genre, while the track Natural at Disaster begins like a piano ballad before suddenly shifting into a malevolent electronic grind.

A Charming Performer

The woman at its centre is a immensely likable, cheerily unvarnished presence: she is, she states 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 thanking them by adding a official undergarment to the merch stand.

What Lies Ahead

It may well end the manner such individual artistic pursuits end – the hostility towards former bandmate Jesy Nelson expressed in the song Natural at Disaster patched up, a press conference to declare that the original group are back – but the fact that every attendee appear word-perfect as they sing along to an album that was released just a month ago makes you wonder. And even if it does, the final Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Jade's individual musical path is not destined to fade into the domain of the dimly remembered placeholder.

• Jade performs at the Manchester venue O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester this evening and is touring the UK until 23 October.