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With the exception of Harry Styles, the solo careers of former members of televised singing competition groups seldom grip the audience's attention. They usually follow certain rules – either an attempt at a more edgy urban music style, complete with at least a track featuring a guest appearance by an US hip-hop artist, or a move into mature mainstream-approved smooth pop-rock territory – and they typically become a dimly remembered placeholder, the visual and auditory experience of someone enthusiastically passing the years prior to the unavoidable band comeback concerts.

An Idiosyncratic Path

It’s a state of affairs that renders the unconventional route thus far followed by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She definitely participates in engaging in the typical activities that former talent show band members are wont to do, including loudly underlining that she's free from the press-managed restrictions of the manufactured pop industry – based on the audience this evening, the top-selling product on the merchandise stall is a handheld cooling device displaying the phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from the track Gossip, her collaboration with electronic pair 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 last year’s superb her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jarring and fragmented mixture of big pop balladry, noisy synthesisers and samples from the classic track Puppet On A String by Sandie Shaw.

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

More Intriguing Material

However, there exists additional where Angel Of My Dreams came from. The song Headache melds an Abba-esque chorus with verses that offer a nearly discordant brand of funk or are enfolded by deep reverberation. She offers the track Unconditional to her mum: it features a wonderful tune, eighties-style electronic percussion, and crashing rock guitar combined with metallic pounding beats. IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the sound of 2000s electronic punk movement, or rather the exciting variation of millennium-era popular music that was heavily influenced by the electroclash genre, while Natural at Disaster begins like a keyboard-led emotional song before unexpectedly swerving into a malevolent electronic grind.

A Charming Performer

The artist on stage is a hugely appealing, delightfully authentic presence: she is, she states at a certain moment, “trembling uncontrollably”; shouting out her queer audience members, who are here in force, she suggests thanking them by adding a branded jockstrap to the merchandise booth.

What Lies Ahead

It could conclude the way these kind of solo careers typically finish – the enmity towards ex-group member Jesy Nelson voiced within Natural at Disaster resolved, a media announcement to announce 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 few weeks prior makes you wonder. And should it occur, the closing Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Jade's individual musical path is not destined to fade into the realms of the barely recalled interim project.

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