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With the exception of Harry Styles, individual artistic journeys of former members of televised singing competition groups rarely capture the public imagination. They usually follow predictable patterns – often a pursuit at a more edgy urban music style, complete with at least a track including a guest appearance by an US hip-hop artist, or a move into mature mainstream-approved polished adult contemporary – and they usually amount to a barely recalled interim project, the visual and auditory experience of someone enthusiastically passing the years before the inevitable 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 engaging in the typical activities that ex-reality TV group artists are wont to do, among them loudly underlining that she’s no longer subject the press-managed restrictions of the manufactured pop industry – based on tonight’s crowd, the most popular item 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 dance duo the group Confidence Man – but regardless, the music she’s opted to make is pop music with a far more fascinating style than usual.

An Impressive First Single

She opened her solo account with the previous year's excellent her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jarring and disjointed melange of grand emotional pop songs, noisy synthesisers and samples from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

As the set on her initial individual concert series proves, not every song on her debut album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as that: Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it's equally standard-issue disco pop, driven by exactly the Supremes sample its title suggests; things are padded out with a interpretation of Madonna’s Frozen that transforms 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 where Angel Of My Dreams came from. The song Headache melds an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with verses that present a borderline atonal style of rhythmic music or are surrounded with deep reverberation. She offers Unconditional to her mother: it has a wonderful tune, early 80s syndrums, and powerful guitar riffs combined with metallic pounding beats. The song IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the musical aesthetic of early 00s electroclash, or rather the exciting variation of early 00s pop that was strongly inspired by the electroclash genre, while Natural at Disaster starts out like a keyboard-led emotional song before unexpectedly swerving into a dark computerized noise.

A Charming Performer

The woman at its centre is a hugely appealing, cheerily unvarnished presence: she declares, she states at a certain moment, “trembling uncontrollably”; giving a shoutout to her queer audience members, who are here in force, she suggests showing appreciation by including a official undergarment to the merchandise booth.

What Lies Ahead

It could conclude the manner these kind of solo careers end – the enmity towards former bandmate her previous colleague Jesy Nelson expressed in Natural at Disaster patched up, a press conference to declare that Little Mix are reunited – but the fact that every attendee seem to be knowing every lyric as they sing along to a record that was released just a month ago causes one to ponder. And should it occur, the final performance of Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Jade's individual musical path is not destined to fade into the realms of the barely recalled interim project.

• Jade plays the Manchester venue O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester this evening and is touring the UK through October 23rd.