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With the exception of Harry Styles, individual artistic journeys of ex-participants of televised singing competition groups seldom grip the public imagination. 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 move into “grownup” Radio 2-friendly smooth pop-rock territory – and they typically become a dimly remembered placeholder, the sight and sound of someone gamely killing time prior to the unavoidable band comeback concerts.

A Unique Journey

It’s a state of affairs that makes the idiosyncratic path thus far followed by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She’s certainly not above doing the kind of things that former talent show band members are wont to do, including emphatically stating that she's free from 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 phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from the track 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 usual.

An Impressive First Single

She opened her solo account with the previous year's excellent her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jarring and disjointed melange of big pop balladry, noisy synthesisers and samples from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

As the set on her initial individual concert series demonstrates, not everything 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 also standard-issue disco pop, driven by precisely 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.

More Intriguing Material

But there’s also more where Angel Of My Dreams came from. Headache melds an Abba-esque chorus with verses that offer a nearly discordant brand of funk or are surrounded with cavernous echo. She offers the track Unconditional to her mother: it features a fabulous melody, eighties-style electronic percussion, and crashing rock guitar combined with clanging industrial drums. IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the musical aesthetic of early 00s electroclash, or more accurately the thrilling strain of millennium-era popular music that was heavily influenced by the electroclash genre, while Natural at Disaster begins like a piano ballad before unexpectedly swerving into a malevolent electronic grind.

A Charming Performer

The woman at its centre is a immensely likable, delightfully authentic figure: she declares, she states at a certain moment, “shaking like a shitting dog”; giving a shoutout to her queer audience members, who are here in force, she proposes showing appreciation by including a branded jockstrap to the merch stand.

What Lies Ahead

It may well end the way such individual artistic pursuits end – the enmity towards ex-group member Jesy Nelson expressed in the song Natural at Disaster resolved, a media announcement to announce that Little Mix are reunited – but the reality 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 even if it does, the closing performance of Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Jade's individual musical path is unlikely to recede into the realms of the dimly remembered placeholder.

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