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Harry Styles aside, the solo careers of ex-participants of televised singing competition groups rarely capture the audience's attention. They usually follow certain rules – often a pursuit at a more edgy urban music style, complete with at least a track featuring a guest appearance by an US hip-hop artist, or a move into “grownup” Radio 2-friendly smooth pop-rock territory – and they typically become a barely recalled interim project, the sight and sound of someone gamely killing time before the inevitable band comeback concerts.

An Idiosyncratic Path

It’s a state of affairs that makes the idiosyncratic path currently taken by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She definitely participates in engaging in the typical activities that ex-reality TV group artists are known for undertaking, among them emphatically stating that she’s no longer subject the press-managed restrictions of the factory-produced music business – judging by the audience this evening, the most popular item on the official goods stand is a fan displaying the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from Gossip, her collaboration with electronic pair the group Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the music she’s opted to make is pop of a noticeably more intriguing stripe than the norm.

A Superb Debut

She opened her solo account with last year’s superb Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jolting and fragmented melange of big pop balladry, noisy synthesisers and samples from the classic track Puppet On A String by Sandie Shaw.

During the performance on her initial individual concert series demonstrates, not everything on her first full-length release her album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as that: the track Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it’s also typical dancefloor-oriented pop, powered by exactly the Supremes sample its title suggests; things are padded out with a interpretation of the Madonna classic Frozen that transforms into a musical compilation of 90s dance hits, from 808’s Pacific State to Set You Free by N-Trance.

More Intriguing Material

However, there exists additional where Angel Of My Dreams came from. Headache combines an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with verses that present a borderline atonal brand of funk or are surrounded with deep reverberation. She offers Unconditional to her mother: it features a wonderful tune, eighties-style electronic percussion, and powerful guitar riffs combined with clanging industrial drums. IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the sound of early 00s electroclash, or rather the exciting variation of millennium-era popular music that was strongly inspired by electroclash, while the track Natural at Disaster begins like a keyboard-led emotional song before suddenly shifting into a malevolent electronic grind.

A Charming Performer

The artist on stage is a immensely likable, delightfully authentic figure: she declares, she announces at one point, “trembling uncontrollably”; shouting out her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are present in large numbers, she suggests showing appreciation by adding a official undergarment to the merch stand.

What Lies Ahead

It may well end the way such individual artistic pursuits typically finish – the hostility towards ex-group member Jesy Nelson voiced within Natural at Disaster patched up, a media announcement to announce that the original group are back – but the reality that the entire audience appear word-perfect as they join in vocally to a record that was released just a month ago makes you wonder. And even if it does, the final Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Jade's individual musical path is not destined to fade into the domain of the barely recalled interim project.

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