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With the exception of Harry Styles, individual artistic journeys of ex-participants of TV talent show-manufactured bands seldom grip the audience's attention. These efforts typically adhere to predictable patterns – often a pursuit at a more edgy urban music style, replete with at least one single including a cameo by an American rapper, or a move into “grownup” Radio 2-friendly 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.

An Idiosyncratic Path

It’s a state of affairs that makes the idiosyncratic path currently taken by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall surprisingly refreshing. She’s certainly not above engaging in the typical activities that ex-reality TV group artists are wont to do, including emphatically stating that she's free from the press-managed restrictions of the factory-produced music business – judging by the audience this evening, the top-selling product on the merchandise stall is a handheld cooling device emblazoned with the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from Gossip, her musical partnership with dance duo the group Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the songs she has chosen to create is pop music with a far more fascinating style than the norm.

An Impressive First Single

She launched her individual career with last year’s superb her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jarring and fragmented mixture of grand emotional pop songs, noisy synthesisers and audio excerpts from the classic track Puppet On A String by Sandie Shaw.

During the performance on her initial individual concert series demonstrates, not every song on her debut album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as that: Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it’s also standard-issue disco pop, driven by precisely the Supremes sample its title suggests; the show is extended with a cover of Madonna’s Frozen that devolves into a musical compilation of nineties club anthems, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.

Additional Fascinating Content

But there’s also more material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. The song Headache combines an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with verses that offer a nearly discordant style of rhythmic music or are surrounded with cavernous echo. She offers Unconditional to her mother: it features a fabulous melody, early 80s syndrums, and powerful guitar riffs combined with metallic pounding beats. IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the sound of 2000s electronic punk movement, or rather the thrilling strain of early 00s pop that was heavily influenced by electroclash, while Natural at Disaster starts out like a piano ballad before suddenly shifting into a malevolent electronic grind.

An Appealing Presence

The woman at its centre is a hugely appealing, delightfully authentic figure: she is, she states at a certain moment, “shaking like a shitting dog”; giving a shoutout to her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are here in force, she proposes thanking them by including a official undergarment to the merchandise booth.

What Lies Ahead

It could conclude the way these kind of solo careers end – the enmity towards ex-group member her previous colleague Jesy Nelson expressed in Natural at Disaster patched up, a press conference to declare that the original group are back – but the reality that the entire audience appear word-perfect as they join in vocally to an album that only came out a month ago makes you wonder. And should it occur, the final performance of Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Jade's individual musical path is not destined to fade into the domain of the dimly remembered placeholder.

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