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Harry Styles aside, the solo careers of former members of televised singing competition groups rarely capture the audience's attention. These efforts typically adhere to certain rules – either an attempt at a more edgy urban music style, replete with at least a track including a cameo by an US hip-hop artist, or a move into mature mainstream-approved smooth pop-rock territory – and they typically become a dimly remembered placeholder, the visual and auditory experience of someone gamely killing time before the inevitable reunion tour.

A Unique Journey

This common scenario that renders the unconventional route currently taken by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall surprisingly refreshing. She’s certainly not above doing the kind of things that ex-reality TV group artists are wont to do, including emphatically stating 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 merchandise stall is a handheld cooling device emblazoned with the phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from the track Gossip, her collaboration with electronic pair the group Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the music she’s opted to make is pop music with a far more fascinating style than usual.

A Superb Debut

She launched her individual career with the previous year's excellent Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jarring and fragmented melange of big pop balladry, noisy synthesisers and audio excerpts from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

As the set on her initial individual concert series demonstrates, not everything on her debut album her album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as that: Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it's equally typical dancefloor-oriented pop, driven by precisely the Supremes sample its title suggests; things are padded out with a interpretation of the Madonna classic Frozen that transforms into a medley of 90s dance hits, from the track Pacific State by 808 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. The song Headache combines an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with song sections that present a nearly discordant brand of funk or are enfolded by cavernous echo. She dedicates Unconditional to her mother: it features a fabulous melody, eighties-style electronic percussion, and powerful guitar riffs allied to clanging industrial drums. IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the musical aesthetic of early 00s electroclash, or more accurately the exciting variation 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 unexpectedly swerving into a dark computerized noise.

An Appealing Presence

The artist on stage is a hugely appealing, delightfully authentic presence: she declares, she states at a certain moment, “shaking like a shitting dog”; shouting out her queer audience members, who are present in large numbers, she suggests thanking them by adding a branded jockstrap to the merch stand.

What Lies Ahead

It may well end the manner such individual artistic pursuits end – the enmity towards former bandmate her previous colleague Jesy Nelson expressed in Natural at Disaster resolved, a media announcement to declare that Little Mix are reunited – 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 causes one to ponder. And should it occur, the closing Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Jade's individual musical path is unlikely to recede into the realms of the barely recalled interim project.

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