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With the exception of Harry Styles, the solo careers of ex-participants of televised singing competition groups rarely capture the audience's attention. These efforts typically adhere to predictable patterns – either an attempt at a more edgy urban music style, replete with at least one single featuring a cameo 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 visual and auditory experience of someone enthusiastically passing the years prior to the unavoidable reunion tour.

An Idiosyncratic Path

It’s a state of affairs that makes the idiosyncratic path currently taken by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She definitely participates in engaging in the typical activities that former talent show band members are wont to do, among them emphatically stating that she's free from the press-managed restrictions of the factory-produced music business – based on tonight’s crowd, the most popular item on the merchandise stall is a handheld cooling device displaying the phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from Gossip, her musical partnership with electronic pair the group Confidence Man – but nevertheless, 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 deeply odd, jolting and fragmented mixture of big pop balladry, loud electronic instruments and audio excerpts from the classic track Puppet On A String by Sandie Shaw.

During the performance on her first solo tour demonstrates, 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 equally typical dancefloor-oriented pop, powered by exactly the Supremes sample its title suggests; the show is extended with a interpretation of the Madonna classic Frozen that devolves into a musical compilation of 90s dance hits, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to Set You Free by N-Trance.

Additional Fascinating Content

However, there exists additional where Angel Of My Dreams came from. The song Headache melds an Abba-esque chorus with song sections that present a nearly discordant style of rhythmic music or are surrounded with deep reverberation. She offers Unconditional to her mother: it has a wonderful tune, eighties-style electronic percussion, and crashing rock guitar combined with metallic pounding beats. The song IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the musical aesthetic of early 00s electroclash, or rather the exciting variation of millennium-era popular music that was strongly inspired by electroclash, while Natural at Disaster starts out like a piano ballad before suddenly shifting into a dark computerized noise.

An Appealing Presence

The woman at its centre is a immensely likable, delightfully authentic presence: she declares, she states at a certain moment, “trembling uncontrollably”; shouting out her queer audience members, who are here in force, she suggests thanking them by including a branded jockstrap to the merchandise booth.

What Lies Ahead

It may well end the way such individual artistic pursuits typically finish – the enmity towards former bandmate her previous colleague Jesy Nelson expressed in Natural at Disaster resolved, a media announcement to declare that the original group are back – but the reality that the entire audience appear 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 final Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Thirlwall’s solo career is unlikely to recede into the realms of the barely recalled interim project.

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