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Harry Styles aside, the solo careers of ex-participants of TV talent show-manufactured bands rarely capture the audience's attention. These efforts typically adhere to certain rules – often a pursuit at a toughened-up R&B sound, complete with at least a track including a guest appearance by an US hip-hop artist, or a lunge towards “grownup” mainstream-approved polished adult contemporary – and they usually amount to a dimly remembered placeholder, the visual and auditory experience 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 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 known for undertaking, including emphatically stating that she’s no longer subject the press-managed restrictions of the factory-produced music business – judging by the audience this evening, the top-selling product on the official goods stand is a handheld cooling device displaying the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from Gossip, her collaboration with electronic pair Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the music she’s opted to make is pop of a noticeably more intriguing stripe than usual.

An Impressive First Single

She opened her solo account with last year’s superb her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jolting and fragmented mixture of big pop balladry, noisy synthesisers and samples from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

During the performance on her initial individual concert series demonstrates, not everything on her debut album her album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as her debut single: Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it's equally typical dancefloor-oriented pop, powered by precisely the Supremes sample the name implies; things are padded out with a interpretation of Madonna’s 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.

More Intriguing Material

However, there exists additional where Angel Of My Dreams came from. Headache combines an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with verses that offer a borderline atonal brand of funk or are enfolded by cavernous echo. She offers Unconditional to her mother: it features a fabulous melody, eighties-style electronic percussion, and crashing rock guitar allied to metallic pounding beats. The song IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the sound of early 00s electroclash, or rather the exciting variation of early 00s pop that was strongly inspired by the electroclash genre, while the track Natural at Disaster starts out like a piano ballad before suddenly shifting into a malevolent electronic grind.

A Charming Performer

The woman at its centre is a hugely appealing, cheerily unvarnished figure: she is, she announces at one point, “trembling uncontrollably”; shouting out her queer audience members, who are here in force, she suggests showing appreciation by adding a branded jockstrap to the merchandise booth.

Future Possibilities

It could conclude the way such individual artistic pursuits typically finish – the enmity towards ex-group member her previous colleague Jesy Nelson expressed in the song Natural at Disaster resolved, a press conference to declare that the original group are back – but the fact that every attendee appear word-perfect as they join in vocally to a record that only came out a month ago causes one to ponder. And should it occur, the closing performance of Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Jade's individual musical path is unlikely to recede into the domain of the dimly remembered placeholder.

• Jade plays the Manchester venue O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester this evening and is traveling across the United Kingdom until 23 October.