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Harry Styles aside, the solo careers of former members of televised singing competition groups seldom grip the audience's attention. They usually follow predictable patterns – either an attempt at a more edgy urban music style, replete with at least a track including a guest appearance by an American rapper, or a lunge towards mature mainstream-approved polished adult contemporary – 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 former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She’s certainly not above doing the kind of things that ex-reality TV group artists are wont to do, including loudly underlining that she's free from the media-trained constraints 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 phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from the track Gossip, her musical partnership with dance duo Confidence Man – but regardless, 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 highly unusual, jarring and disjointed mixture of grand emotional pop songs, noisy synthesisers and samples from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

During the performance on her initial individual concert series proves, not every song on her debut album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as that: Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it's equally standard-issue disco pop, powered by exactly the Supremes sample its title suggests; the show is extended with a interpretation of the Madonna classic Frozen that transforms into a musical compilation of 90s dance hits, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to Set You Free by N-Trance.

More Intriguing Material

But there’s also more where Angel Of My Dreams came from. Headache melds an Abba-esque chorus with song sections that present a nearly discordant brand of funk or are enfolded by cavernous echo. She offers Unconditional to her mum: it features a wonderful tune, early 80s syndrums, and powerful guitar riffs allied to metallic pounding beats. IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the sound of early 00s electroclash, or rather the exciting variation of early 00s pop that was heavily influenced by electroclash, while the track Natural at Disaster begins like a piano ballad before unexpectedly swerving into a dark computerized noise.

A Charming Performer

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

What Lies Ahead

It may well end the way such individual artistic pursuits end – the enmity towards ex-group member her previous colleague Jesy Nelson expressed in the song Natural at Disaster patched up, a media announcement to declare that the original group are back – but the fact that every attendee seem to be word-perfect as they join in vocally to an album that only came out a few weeks prior 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 this evening and is touring the UK until 23 October.