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Harry Styles aside, the solo careers of ex-participants of televised singing competition groups rarely capture the audience's attention. They usually follow predictable patterns – either an attempt at a more edgy urban music style, replete with at least one single featuring a guest appearance by an American rapper, or a lunge towards “grownup” mainstream-approved smooth pop-rock territory – and they usually amount to a barely recalled interim project, the visual and auditory experience of someone gamely killing time prior to the unavoidable reunion tour.

A Unique Journey

This common scenario that renders the unconventional route currently taken by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall surprisingly refreshing. She’s certainly not above engaging in the typical activities that former talent show band members are known for undertaking, including emphatically stating that she's free from the media-trained constraints of the manufactured pop industry – judging by the audience this evening, the top-selling product on the merchandise stall is a fan displaying the legend “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 of a noticeably more intriguing stripe 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 disjointed melange of grand emotional pop songs, noisy synthesisers and audio excerpts from the classic track Puppet On A String by Sandie Shaw.

As the set on her initial individual concert series proves, not every song on her debut 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 also standard-issue disco pop, driven by exactly the Motown musical snippet its title suggests; the show is extended 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 Set You Free by N-Trance.

Additional Fascinating Content

But there’s also more where Angel Of My Dreams came from. The song Headache melds an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with song sections that offer a borderline atonal brand of funk or are surrounded with deep reverberation. She offers Unconditional to her mum: it has a wonderful tune, early 80s syndrums, and crashing rock guitar allied to metallic pounding beats. IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the sound of early 00s electroclash, or more accurately the thrilling strain of millennium-era popular music that was strongly inspired by electroclash, while the track Natural at Disaster begins like a keyboard-led emotional song before suddenly shifting into a dark computerized noise.

An Appealing Presence

The artist on stage is a immensely likable, delightfully authentic presence: she is, she announces at one point, “shaking like a shitting dog”; shouting out her queer audience members, who are present in large numbers, she suggests thanking them by adding a official undergarment to the merchandise booth.

Future Possibilities

It may well end the way these kind of solo careers typically finish – the hostility towards ex-group member her previous colleague Jesy Nelson expressed in the song Natural at Disaster patched up, a media announcement to declare that the original group are back – but the fact 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 should it occur, the closing Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Thirlwall’s solo career is unlikely to recede into the realms of the dimly remembered placeholder.

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