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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 toughened-up R&B sound, complete with at least one single featuring a cameo by an US hip-hop artist, or a lunge towards “grownup” Radio 2-friendly polished adult contemporary – and they usually amount to a dimly remembered placeholder, the visual and auditory experience of someone gamely killing time before the inevitable reunion tour.

An Idiosyncratic Path

It’s a state of affairs that renders the unconventional route currently taken by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She definitely participates in doing the kind of things that former talent show band members are wont to do, among them emphatically stating that she's free from the media-trained constraints of the manufactured pop industry – based on the audience this evening, the top-selling product on the official goods stand is a fan displaying the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from Gossip, her musical partnership with dance duo the group Confidence Man – but regardless, the songs she has chosen to create 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 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 first solo tour demonstrates, not every song on her debut 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 exactly the Supremes sample the name implies; the show is extended with a interpretation of the Madonna classic Frozen that transforms into a musical compilation of 90s dance hits, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.

Additional Fascinating Content

However, there exists additional where Angel Of My Dreams came from. The song Headache combines an Abba-esque chorus with song sections that offer a nearly discordant style of rhythmic music or are enfolded by deep reverberation. She offers the track Unconditional to her mother: it has a fabulous melody, eighties-style electronic percussion, and crashing rock guitar combined with clanging industrial drums. The song IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the musical aesthetic of 2000s electronic punk movement, or rather the exciting variation of early 00s pop that was heavily influenced by the electroclash genre, while Natural at Disaster begins like a piano ballad before suddenly shifting into a malevolent electronic grind.

An Appealing Presence

The woman at its centre is a immensely likable, delightfully authentic figure: she is, she states at a certain moment, “shaking like a shitting dog”; giving a shoutout to her queer audience members, who are present in large numbers, she proposes thanking them by including a official undergarment to the merch stand.

What Lies Ahead

It may well end the manner these kind of solo careers end – the enmity towards ex-group member her previous colleague Jesy Nelson expressed in Natural at Disaster patched up, a press conference to announce that Little Mix are back – but the fact that every attendee appear word-perfect as they join in vocally to an album that was released just a month ago makes you wonder. And should it occur, the closing 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 the city of Manchester this evening and is touring the UK through October 23rd.