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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. They usually follow predictable patterns – often a pursuit at a more edgy urban music style, replete with at least one single including a guest appearance by an US hip-hop artist, or a move into mature Radio 2-friendly polished adult contemporary – and they usually amount to a dimly remembered placeholder, the visual and auditory experience of someone gamely killing time before the inevitable reunion tour.

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 doing the kind of things that ex-reality TV group artists are wont to do, including emphatically stating that she’s no longer subject the media-trained constraints of the manufactured pop industry – judging by tonight’s crowd, the top-selling product on the merchandise stall is a handheld cooling device displaying the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from the track Gossip, her collaboration with dance duo 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 the previous year's excellent her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jarring and fragmented mixture of big pop balladry, loud electronic instruments and samples from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

As the set on her initial individual concert series demonstrates, not everything on her debut album her album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as her debut single: the track Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it’s also standard-issue disco pop, powered by precisely the Supremes sample the name implies; things are padded out with a interpretation of the Madonna classic Frozen that devolves into a medley of nineties club anthems, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.

More Intriguing Material

But there’s also more material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. Headache combines an Abba-esque chorus with song sections that present a borderline atonal brand of funk or are surrounded with cavernous echo. She offers the track Unconditional to her mother: it has a fabulous melody, eighties-style electronic percussion, and powerful guitar riffs combined with metallic pounding beats. The song IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the musical aesthetic of early 00s electroclash, or rather the exciting variation of early 00s pop that was heavily influenced by the electroclash genre, while Natural at Disaster starts out like a keyboard-led emotional song before unexpectedly swerving into a dark computerized noise.

A Charming Performer

The artist on stage is a hugely appealing, delightfully authentic figure: she declares, she announces at a certain moment, “trembling uncontrollably”; giving a shoutout to her queer audience members, who are present in large numbers, she suggests showing appreciation by adding a branded jockstrap to the merchandise booth.

Future Possibilities

It may well end the way these kind of solo careers typically finish – the enmity towards ex-group member Jesy Nelson expressed in the song Natural at Disaster patched up, a media announcement to declare that the original group are back – but the fact that every attendee 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 Thirlwall’s solo career is unlikely to recede into the domain of the dimly remembered placeholder.

• Jade plays the O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester tonight and is touring the UK through October 23rd.