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With the exception of Harry Styles, individual artistic journeys of ex-participants of televised singing competition groups seldom grip the audience's attention. These efforts typically adhere to predictable patterns – often a pursuit at a toughened-up R&B sound, replete with at least one single including a cameo by an American rapper, or a lunge towards “grownup” Radio 2-friendly smooth pop-rock territory – and they usually amount to a barely recalled interim project, the sight and sound of someone enthusiastically passing the years prior to the unavoidable reunion tour.

A Unique Journey

It’s a state of affairs that makes the idiosyncratic path thus far followed by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She’s certainly not above doing the kind of things that former talent show band members are known for undertaking, including loudly underlining that she's free from the press-managed restrictions of the factory-produced music business – judging by tonight’s crowd, the top-selling product on the merchandise stall is a handheld cooling device emblazoned with the phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from Gossip, her collaboration 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 usual.

An Impressive First Single

She launched her individual career with the previous year's excellent Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jarring and fragmented melange of grand emotional pop songs, noisy synthesisers and samples from the classic track Puppet On A String by Sandie Shaw.

As the set on her initial individual concert series demonstrates, not everything on her first full-length release her album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as her debut single: the track Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it's equally typical dancefloor-oriented pop, powered by exactly the Motown musical snippet its title suggests; the show is extended with a cover of Madonna’s Frozen that devolves into a medley of 90s dance hits, from 808’s Pacific State to Set You Free by N-Trance.

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 verses that present a nearly discordant style of rhythmic music or are enfolded by cavernous echo. She offers Unconditional to her mother: it features a wonderful tune, early 80s syndrums, and powerful guitar riffs allied to metallic pounding beats. IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the sound of early 00s electroclash, or more accurately the thrilling strain of early 00s pop that was strongly inspired by the electroclash genre, while Natural at Disaster starts out like a keyboard-led emotional song before unexpectedly swerving into a malevolent electronic grind.

An Appealing Presence

The woman at its centre is a immensely likable, cheerily unvarnished figure: she declares, she states at a certain moment, “trembling uncontrollably”; shouting out her queer audience members, who are here in force, she proposes showing appreciation by including a branded jockstrap to the merchandise booth.

What Lies Ahead

It could conclude the manner these kind of solo careers end – the hostility towards ex-group member Jesy Nelson expressed in the song Natural at Disaster resolved, a press conference to declare that Little Mix are reunited – but the fact that the entire audience seem to be word-perfect as they sing along to an album that was released just a month ago makes you wonder. And should it occur, the final performance of 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 performs at the Manchester venue O2 Victoria Warehouse in the city of Manchester this evening and is traveling across the United Kingdom until 23 October.