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With the exception of Harry Styles, the solo careers of ex-participants of televised singing competition groups rarely capture the audience's attention. These efforts typically adhere to predictable patterns – either an attempt at a more edgy urban music style, replete with at least a track featuring a guest appearance by an American rapper, or a lunge towards “grownup” Radio 2-friendly smooth pop-rock territory – and they typically become a dimly remembered placeholder, the sight and sound of someone enthusiastically passing the years prior to the unavoidable band comeback concerts.

A Unique Journey

It’s a state of affairs that makes the idiosyncratic path currently taken by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall surprisingly refreshing. She’s certainly not above doing the kind of things that ex-reality TV group artists are known for undertaking, including loudly underlining that she’s no longer subject the press-managed restrictions of the manufactured pop industry – based on tonight’s crowd, the top-selling product on the official goods stand is a fan emblazoned with 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 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, jarring and disjointed mixture of big pop balladry, noisy synthesisers and audio excerpts from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

During the performance on her initial individual concert series demonstrates, not every song on her first full-length release That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as that: Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it’s also typical dancefloor-oriented pop, powered by precisely the Motown musical snippet the name implies; things are padded out with a cover of the Madonna classic Frozen that transforms into a musical compilation of nineties club anthems, from 808’s Pacific State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.

Additional Fascinating Content

But there’s also more material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. Headache combines an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with song sections that offer a borderline atonal brand of funk or are enfolded by cavernous echo. She dedicates Unconditional to her mum: it has a wonderful tune, eighties-style electronic percussion, and crashing rock guitar allied to clanging industrial drums. IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the musical aesthetic of early 00s electroclash, or more accurately the thrilling strain of millennium-era popular music that was strongly inspired by the electroclash genre, while the track Natural at Disaster starts out like a keyboard-led emotional song before suddenly shifting into a dark computerized noise.

An Appealing Presence

The artist on stage is a hugely appealing, delightfully authentic figure: she declares, she announces at one point, “trembling uncontrollably”; shouting out her queer audience members, who are present in large numbers, she proposes showing appreciation by adding a official undergarment to the merch stand.

What Lies Ahead

It could conclude the manner these kind of solo careers typically finish – the enmity towards former bandmate her previous colleague Jesy Nelson expressed in Natural at Disaster resolved, a press conference to declare that Little Mix are back – but the fact that the entire audience seem to be knowing every lyric as they sing along to an album that was released just a month ago makes you wonder. And should it occur, the final performance of Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Jade's individual musical path is not destined to fade into the domain of the barely recalled interim project.

• Jade performs at the Manchester venue O2 Victoria Warehouse in the city of Manchester tonight and is touring the UK through October 23rd.