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With the exception of Harry Styles, the solo careers of ex-participants of televised singing competition groups rarely capture the public imagination. These efforts typically adhere to certain rules – either an attempt at a toughened-up R&B sound, replete with at least a track including a guest appearance by an US hip-hop artist, or a lunge towards mature mainstream-approved polished adult contemporary – and they usually amount to a dimly remembered placeholder, the sight and sound of someone gamely killing time before the inevitable band comeback concerts.

An Idiosyncratic Path

It’s a state of affairs that makes the idiosyncratic path thus far followed by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She’s certainly not above engaging in the typical activities that former talent show band members are wont to do, among them emphatically stating that she's free from the press-managed restrictions of the manufactured pop industry – judging by the audience this evening, the most popular item on the official goods stand is a fan emblazoned with the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from the track Gossip, her musical partnership with dance duo the group Confidence Man – but regardless, the music she’s opted to make is pop of a noticeably more intriguing stripe than usual.

A Superb Debut

She launched her individual career with the previous year's excellent Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jarring and disjointed mixture of grand emotional pop songs, loud electronic instruments and samples from the classic track Puppet On A String by Sandie Shaw.

During the performance on her initial individual concert series proves, not everything on her first full-length release her album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as that: the track Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it's equally typical dancefloor-oriented pop, driven by exactly the Motown musical snippet the name implies; the show is extended with a interpretation of the Madonna classic Frozen that devolves into a medley 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 combines an Abba-esque chorus with song sections that offer a borderline atonal brand of funk or are enfolded by deep reverberation. She offers Unconditional to her mother: it features a fabulous melody, early 80s syndrums, and crashing rock guitar combined with clanging industrial drums. The song IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the sound of 2000s electronic punk movement, or more accurately the thrilling strain of millennium-era popular music that was strongly inspired by the electroclash genre, while Natural at Disaster begins like a piano ballad before suddenly shifting into a malevolent electronic grind.

An Appealing Presence

The woman at its centre is a immensely likable, cheerily unvarnished figure: she declares, she states at one point, “trembling uncontrollably”; shouting out her queer audience members, who are here in force, she proposes showing appreciation by adding a branded jockstrap to the merch stand.

What Lies Ahead

It may well end the manner such individual artistic pursuits typically finish – the enmity towards ex-group member her previous colleague Jesy Nelson expressed in the song Natural at Disaster patched up, a press conference to announce that the original group are back – but the fact that every attendee seem to be knowing every lyric as they join in vocally to a record that was released just a few weeks prior makes you wonder. And should it occur, the closing Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Thirlwall’s solo career is unlikely to recede into the domain of the dimly remembered placeholder.

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