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Harry Styles aside, individual artistic journeys of ex-participants of televised singing competition groups seldom grip the audience's attention. They usually follow predictable patterns – either an attempt at a toughened-up R&B sound, replete with at least one single including a guest appearance by an American rapper, or a move into mature mainstream-approved polished adult contemporary – and they usually amount to a barely recalled interim project, the sight and sound of someone gamely killing time before the inevitable reunion tour.

A Unique Journey

This common scenario that makes the idiosyncratic path thus far followed by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She’s certainly not above engaging in the typical activities that ex-reality TV group artists are wont to do, including loudly underlining that she’s no longer subject the media-trained constraints of the manufactured pop industry – judging by the audience this evening, the most popular item on the merchandise stall is a handheld cooling device displaying the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from the track Gossip, her collaboration with dance duo Confidence Man – but regardless, the music she’s opted to make is pop music with a far more fascinating style than the norm.

A Superb Debut

She opened her solo account with the previous year's excellent her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jolting and fragmented mixture of grand emotional pop songs, noisy synthesisers and audio excerpts from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

During the performance on her first solo tour proves, not everything on her debut album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as that: Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it’s also typical dancefloor-oriented pop, powered by precisely the Supremes sample the name implies; the show is extended with a interpretation of Madonna’s Frozen that transforms into a musical compilation of nineties club anthems, from 808’s Pacific State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.

More Intriguing Material

But there’s also more material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. Headache melds an Abba-esque chorus with song sections that offer a nearly discordant style of rhythmic music or are enfolded by deep reverberation. She offers Unconditional to her mum: it has a wonderful tune, eighties-style electronic percussion, and powerful guitar riffs combined with clanging industrial drums. IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the sound of 2000s electronic punk movement, or more accurately the exciting variation of early 00s pop that was heavily influenced by the electroclash genre, while the track Natural at Disaster begins like a piano ballad before suddenly shifting into a dark computerized noise.

A Charming Performer

The artist on stage is a immensely likable, cheerily unvarnished figure: she is, she states at a certain moment, “shaking like a shitting dog”; shouting out her queer audience members, who are present in large numbers, she proposes showing appreciation by including a branded jockstrap 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 voiced within Natural at Disaster resolved, a media announcement to declare that Little Mix are reunited – but the fact that every attendee appear word-perfect as they join in vocally to a record that only came out a month ago makes you wonder. And should it occur, the final Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Jade's individual musical path is unlikely to recede into the realms of the dimly remembered placeholder.

• Jade performs at the Manchester venue O2 Victoria Warehouse in the city of Manchester tonight and is traveling across the United Kingdom through October 23rd.