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Harry Styles aside, individual artistic journeys of ex-participants of televised singing competition groups rarely capture the audience's attention. These efforts typically adhere to predictable patterns – often a pursuit at a more edgy urban music style, complete with at least one single including a cameo by an American rapper, or a lunge towards mature mainstream-approved smooth pop-rock territory – and they typically become a dimly remembered placeholder, the sight and sound of someone gamely killing time prior to the unavoidable reunion tour.

An Idiosyncratic Path

This common scenario that renders the unconventional route thus far followed by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall surprisingly refreshing. She definitely participates in doing the kind of things that ex-reality TV group artists are known for undertaking, including emphatically stating that she's free from the press-managed restrictions of the factory-produced music business – based on the audience this evening, the top-selling product on the merchandise stall is a fan emblazoned with the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from Gossip, her collaboration with dance duo Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the songs she has chosen to create is pop music with a far more fascinating style than usual.

An Impressive First Single

She launched her individual career with the previous year's excellent Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jolting and fragmented mixture of grand emotional pop songs, noisy synthesisers and audio excerpts from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

As the set on her initial individual concert series proves, not everything 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 typical dancefloor-oriented pop, powered by exactly the Motown musical snippet the name implies; things are padded out with a interpretation of the Madonna classic Frozen that transforms into a medley of 90s dance hits, from 808’s Pacific State to Set You Free by N-Trance.

Additional Fascinating Content

However, there exists additional material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. Headache melds an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with song sections that offer a nearly discordant brand of funk or are surrounded with cavernous echo. She dedicates Unconditional to her mum: it features a fabulous melody, eighties-style electronic percussion, and powerful guitar riffs combined with clanging industrial drums. IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the sound of early 00s electroclash, or more accurately the exciting variation of millennium-era popular music that was strongly inspired by the electroclash genre, while Natural at Disaster starts out like a piano ballad before unexpectedly swerving into a malevolent electronic grind.

An Appealing Presence

The artist on stage is a immensely likable, cheerily unvarnished presence: she is, she announces at one point, “trembling uncontrollably”; shouting out her queer audience members, who are here in force, she suggests showing appreciation by including a branded jockstrap to the merchandise booth.

Future Possibilities

It may well end the manner these kind of solo careers end – the enmity towards ex-group member Jesy Nelson expressed in Natural at Disaster resolved, a media announcement to declare that the original group are back – but the reality that every attendee appear word-perfect as they join in vocally to an album that only came out a few weeks prior causes one to ponder. And even if it does, the closing performance of Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Thirlwall’s solo career is not destined to fade into the realms of the dimly remembered placeholder.

• Jade performs at the O2 Victoria Warehouse in the city of Manchester this evening and is traveling across the United Kingdom until 23 October.