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Harry Styles aside, the solo careers of former members of televised singing competition groups rarely capture the public imagination. These efforts typically adhere to certain rules – either an attempt at a more edgy urban music style, complete with at least a track including a cameo by an American rapper, or a lunge towards mature mainstream-approved smooth pop-rock territory – and they usually amount to a dimly remembered placeholder, the sight and sound of someone enthusiastically passing the years prior to the unavoidable 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 doing the kind of things that ex-reality TV group artists are known for undertaking, including emphatically stating that she's free from the press-managed restrictions of the manufactured pop industry – based on tonight’s crowd, the most popular item on the merchandise stall is a fan 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 the norm.

A Superb Debut

She launched her individual career with last year’s superb Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jolting and fragmented melange 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 first full-length release That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as that: the track Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it’s also typical dancefloor-oriented pop, powered by exactly the Supremes sample its title suggests; things are padded out 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

But there’s also more material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. The song Headache melds an Abba-esque chorus with song sections that present a borderline atonal style of rhythmic music or are enfolded by cavernous echo. She dedicates Unconditional to her mother: it features a wonderful tune, early 80s syndrums, and crashing rock guitar allied to metallic pounding beats. IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the musical aesthetic of early 00s electroclash, or more accurately the exciting variation of millennium-era popular music that was strongly inspired by the electroclash genre, while Natural at Disaster starts out like a keyboard-led emotional song before suddenly shifting into a malevolent electronic grind.

A Charming Performer

The woman at its centre is a immensely likable, delightfully authentic presence: she is, she states at one point, “trembling uncontrollably”; giving a shoutout to her queer audience members, who are here in force, she suggests showing appreciation by adding a branded jockstrap to the merchandise booth.

What Lies Ahead

It may well end the way such individual artistic pursuits end – the hostility towards ex-group member her previous colleague Jesy Nelson voiced within the song Natural at Disaster resolved, a media announcement to declare that the original group are reunited – but the reality that the entire audience seem to be knowing every lyric as they join in vocally to a record that was released just a few weeks prior causes one to ponder. And should it occur, the final performance of Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Jade's individual musical path is unlikely to recede into the realms of the dimly remembered placeholder.

• Jade performs at the Manchester venue O2 Victoria Warehouse in the city of Manchester this evening and is touring the UK through October 23rd.