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Harry Styles aside, the solo careers of former members of televised singing competition groups seldom grip the audience's attention. These efforts typically adhere to certain rules – either an attempt at a toughened-up R&B sound, complete with at least a track including a cameo by an US hip-hop artist, or a lunge towards mature mainstream-approved polished adult contemporary – and they typically become a barely recalled interim project, the visual and auditory experience of someone enthusiastically passing the years before the inevitable band comeback concerts.

An Idiosyncratic Path

It’s a state of affairs that renders the unconventional route thus far followed by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She definitely participates in 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 media-trained constraints of the factory-produced music business – based on the audience this evening, the most popular item on the merchandise stall is a handheld cooling device emblazoned with the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from the track 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 usual.

A Superb Debut

She launched her individual career with the previous year's excellent her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jarring and disjointed mixture of big pop balladry, noisy synthesisers and samples from the classic track Puppet On A String by Sandie Shaw.

During the performance on her initial individual concert series demonstrates, not every song on her debut album 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 equally typical dancefloor-oriented pop, powered by exactly the Motown musical snippet the name implies; things are padded out with a cover of Madonna’s Frozen that transforms into a medley of nineties club anthems, 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 combines an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with verses that offer a borderline atonal style of rhythmic music or are surrounded with cavernous echo. She dedicates Unconditional to her mum: it features a fabulous melody, early 80s syndrums, and powerful guitar riffs combined with metallic pounding beats. The song IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the musical aesthetic of early 00s electroclash, or more accurately the thrilling strain of millennium-era popular music that was strongly inspired by electroclash, while the track Natural at Disaster starts out like a keyboard-led emotional song before suddenly shifting into a malevolent electronic grind.

An Appealing Presence

The woman at its centre is a immensely likable, cheerily unvarnished figure: she is, she announces at one point, “trembling uncontrollably”; shouting out her queer audience members, who are present in large numbers, she suggests showing appreciation by including a official undergarment to the merchandise booth.

Future Possibilities

It could conclude the manner such individual artistic pursuits typically finish – the enmity towards former bandmate her previous colleague Jesy Nelson expressed in the song Natural at Disaster patched up, a media announcement to announce that the original group are reunited – but the fact that every attendee appear word-perfect as they sing along to an album that was released just a month ago makes you wonder. And should it occur, the final Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Jade's individual musical path is unlikely to recede into the domain of the barely recalled interim project.

• Jade performs at the Manchester venue O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester tonight and is touring the UK until 23 October.