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Harry Styles aside, individual artistic journeys of ex-participants of televised singing competition groups rarely capture the audience's attention. These efforts typically adhere to predictable patterns – either an attempt at a toughened-up R&B sound, replete with at least one single featuring a guest appearance by an US hip-hop artist, or a move into mature Radio 2-friendly polished adult contemporary – and they typically become a barely recalled interim project, 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 currently taken by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She’s certainly not above engaging in the typical activities that ex-reality TV group artists 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 most popular item on the official goods stand is a handheld cooling device displaying the phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from Gossip, her musical partnership with electronic pair the group Confidence Man – but nevertheless, 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 last year’s superb Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jolting and disjointed mixture of grand emotional pop songs, loud electronic instruments and audio excerpts from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

During the performance on her first solo tour demonstrates, not everything on her debut album her album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as her debut single: Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it’s also typical dancefloor-oriented pop, powered by exactly the Supremes sample the name implies; the show is extended with a interpretation of Madonna’s Frozen that transforms into a medley 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 material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. The song Headache melds an Abba-esque chorus with verses that offer a nearly discordant style of rhythmic music or are surrounded with cavernous echo. She offers the track Unconditional to her mum: it has a fabulous melody, early 80s syndrums, and powerful guitar riffs allied to metallic pounding beats. The song IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the musical aesthetic of 2000s electronic punk movement, or rather 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 piano ballad before unexpectedly swerving into a dark computerized noise.

An Appealing Presence

The woman at its centre is a immensely likable, delightfully authentic presence: she declares, she states at one point, “trembling uncontrollably”; giving a shoutout to her queer audience members, who are here in force, she suggests thanking them by adding a official undergarment to the merch stand.

Future Possibilities

It may well end the manner these kind of solo careers typically finish – the enmity towards ex-group member Jesy Nelson voiced within Natural at Disaster patched up, a media announcement to declare that the original group are back – but the fact that the entire audience appear knowing every lyric as they join in vocally to an album that was released just a month ago causes one to ponder. 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 realms of the barely recalled interim project.

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