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With the exception of Harry Styles, the solo careers of ex-participants of TV talent show-manufactured bands rarely capture the public imagination. These efforts typically adhere to predictable patterns – either an attempt 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 mature Radio 2-friendly smooth pop-rock territory – and they typically become a barely recalled interim project, the visual and auditory experience of someone enthusiastically passing the years before the inevitable reunion tour.

An Idiosyncratic Path

It’s a state of affairs that renders the unconventional route currently taken by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall surprisingly refreshing. She definitely participates in engaging in the typical activities that ex-reality TV group artists are wont to do, including emphatically stating that she’s no longer subject the media-trained constraints of the manufactured pop industry – based on tonight’s crowd, the top-selling product on the official goods stand is a handheld cooling device displaying the phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from Gossip, her musical partnership with dance duo Confidence Man – but regardless, the music she’s opted to make is pop of a noticeably more intriguing stripe than the norm.

A Superb Debut

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 samples from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

During the performance on her initial individual concert series proves, not every song on her first full-length release her album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as her debut single: the track Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it's equally standard-issue disco pop, driven by precisely the Motown musical snippet its title suggests; things are padded out with a cover of Madonna’s Frozen that devolves into a musical compilation of 90s dance hits, from 808’s Pacific State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.

Additional Fascinating Content

But there’s also more where Angel Of My Dreams came from. The song Headache combines an Abba-esque chorus with verses that present a borderline atonal style of rhythmic music or are enfolded by cavernous echo. She offers Unconditional to her mum: it has a wonderful tune, early 80s syndrums, and crashing rock guitar allied to metallic pounding beats. The song IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the sound of early 00s electroclash, or more accurately the thrilling strain of millennium-era popular music that was heavily influenced by the electroclash genre, while the track Natural at Disaster begins like a keyboard-led emotional song before unexpectedly swerving into a malevolent electronic grind.

A Charming Performer

The woman at its centre is a immensely likable, cheerily unvarnished presence: she is, she announces at a certain moment, “trembling uncontrollably”; shouting out her queer audience members, who are here in force, she proposes thanking them by adding a branded jockstrap to the merch stand.

Future Possibilities

It could conclude the manner such individual artistic pursuits typically finish – the enmity towards former bandmate Jesy Nelson expressed in the song Natural at Disaster resolved, a media announcement to declare that Little Mix are back – but the reality that every attendee seem to be word-perfect as they join in vocally to an album that only came out a month ago causes one to ponder. And even if it does, the final performance of Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Thirlwall’s solo career is not destined to fade into the realms of the barely recalled interim project.

• Jade performs at the Manchester venue O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester tonight and is touring the UK through October 23rd.