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Harry Styles aside, individual artistic journeys of former members of televised singing competition groups seldom grip the audience's attention. They usually follow predictable patterns – often a pursuit at a more edgy urban music style, replete with at least a track featuring a guest appearance by an US hip-hop artist, or a move into mature mainstream-approved smooth pop-rock territory – and they usually amount to a barely recalled interim project, the sight and sound of someone gamely killing time before the inevitable reunion tour.

A Unique Journey

This common scenario that renders the unconventional route currently taken by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She’s certainly not above engaging in the typical activities that ex-reality TV group artists are wont to do, among them loudly underlining that she's free from the press-managed restrictions of the factory-produced music business – judging by the audience this evening, the most popular item on the merchandise stall is a handheld cooling device emblazoned with the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from Gossip, her musical partnership with electronic pair the group Confidence Man – but regardless, the songs she has chosen to create is pop music with a far more fascinating style than the norm.

An Impressive First Single

She opened her solo account with the previous year's excellent Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jolting and fragmented melange of grand emotional pop songs, noisy synthesisers and audio excerpts from the classic track Puppet On A String by Sandie Shaw.

During the performance on her initial individual concert series proves, not everything on her first full-length release her album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as that: the track Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it’s also typical dancefloor-oriented pop, driven by exactly the Motown musical snippet the name implies; the show is extended 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.

More Intriguing Material

But there’s also more where Angel Of My Dreams came from. The song Headache combines an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with song sections that present a borderline atonal style of rhythmic music or are surrounded with deep reverberation. She offers the track Unconditional to her mother: it has a fabulous melody, eighties-style electronic percussion, and crashing rock guitar allied to clanging industrial drums. The song IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the sound of 2000s electronic punk movement, 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 unexpectedly swerving into a dark computerized noise.

A Charming Performer

The woman at its centre is a hugely appealing, delightfully authentic figure: she is, she announces at a certain moment, “shaking like a shitting dog”; giving a shoutout to her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are here in force, she proposes showing appreciation by including a official undergarment to the merchandise booth.

What Lies Ahead

It could conclude the way such individual artistic pursuits end – the hostility towards former bandmate Jesy Nelson expressed in Natural at Disaster patched up, a media announcement to announce that Little Mix are reunited – but the reality that the entire audience seem to be word-perfect as they join in vocally to an album that was released just a month ago causes one to ponder. And even if it does, the closing Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Thirlwall’s solo career is unlikely to recede into the realms of the dimly remembered placeholder.

• Jade performs at the O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester tonight and is touring the UK until 23 October.