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With the exception of Harry Styles, the solo careers of former members of televised singing competition groups seldom grip the audience's attention. These efforts typically adhere to predictable patterns – often a pursuit at a toughened-up R&B sound, replete with at least a track featuring a cameo by an US hip-hop artist, or a move into mature mainstream-approved smooth pop-rock territory – and they usually amount to a barely recalled interim project, the sight and sound of someone enthusiastically passing the years 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 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 no longer subject the media-trained constraints of the manufactured pop industry – based on tonight’s crowd, the top-selling product on the official goods stand is a handheld cooling device displaying the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from the track Gossip, her collaboration with electronic pair Confidence Man – but regardless, the songs she has chosen to create is pop of a noticeably more intriguing stripe than the norm.

An Impressive First Single

She opened her solo account with the previous year's excellent her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jarring and fragmented mixture of big pop balladry, loud electronic instruments and samples from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

As the set on her first solo tour proves, not everything on her first full-length release her 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 exactly the Motown musical snippet the name implies; things are padded out with a cover of Madonna’s Frozen that devolves into a musical compilation of nineties club anthems, from 808’s Pacific State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.

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 offer a nearly discordant brand of funk or are enfolded by deep reverberation. She dedicates Unconditional to her mother: it has a wonderful tune, early 80s syndrums, and powerful guitar riffs combined with metallic pounding beats. IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the musical aesthetic of early 00s electroclash, or rather the exciting variation of millennium-era popular music that was strongly inspired by electroclash, while Natural at Disaster begins like a piano ballad before unexpectedly swerving into a malevolent electronic grind.

An Appealing Presence

The woman at its centre is a immensely likable, cheerily unvarnished figure: she is, she announces at one point, “shaking like a shitting dog”; shouting out her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are here in force, she suggests showing appreciation by adding a branded jockstrap to the merch stand.

Future Possibilities

It could conclude the manner such individual artistic pursuits end – the enmity towards ex-group member Jesy Nelson voiced within Natural at Disaster resolved, a media announcement to declare that Little Mix are reunited – but the fact that every attendee appear word-perfect as they join in vocally to a record that was released just a month ago makes you wonder. And should it occur, the final Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Jade's individual musical path is not destined to fade into the realms of the dimly remembered placeholder.

• Jade plays the O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester tonight and is touring the UK until 23 October.