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With the exception of Harry Styles, the solo careers of ex-participants of TV talent show-manufactured bands seldom grip the audience's attention. These efforts typically adhere to predictable patterns – either an attempt at a more edgy urban music style, replete with at least a track featuring a guest appearance by an US hip-hop artist, or a move into mature Radio 2-friendly smooth pop-rock territory – and they usually amount to a dimly remembered placeholder, the sight and sound of someone gamely killing time prior to the unavoidable reunion tour.

An Idiosyncratic Path

It’s a state of affairs that renders the unconventional route currently taken by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall surprisingly refreshing. 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 no longer subject the media-trained constraints of the factory-produced music business – judging by tonight’s crowd, the most popular item on the official goods stand 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 music she’s opted to make is pop music with a far more fascinating style than usual.

An Impressive First Single

She launched her individual career with the previous year's excellent Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jarring and disjointed melange of grand emotional pop songs, noisy synthesisers and samples from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

As the set on her initial individual concert series proves, not every song on her debut album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as her debut single: 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 its title suggests; the show is extended with a cover of the Madonna classic Frozen that devolves into a musical compilation of 90s dance hits, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to Set You Free by N-Trance.

Additional Fascinating Content

But there’s also more material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. The song Headache melds an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with verses that present a borderline atonal brand of funk or are enfolded by deep reverberation. She offers the track Unconditional to her mother: it has a fabulous melody, early 80s syndrums, and crashing rock guitar combined with clanging industrial drums. 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 electroclash, while Natural at Disaster starts out 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 is, she states at a certain moment, “shaking like a shitting dog”; shouting out her queer audience members, who are here in force, she proposes thanking them by adding a official undergarment to the merch stand.

Future Possibilities

It could conclude the manner such individual artistic pursuits typically finish – the enmity towards ex-group member Jesy Nelson voiced within the song Natural at Disaster patched up, a press conference to announce that Little Mix are back – but the fact that every attendee seem to be word-perfect 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 closing Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Jade's individual musical path is not destined to fade into the domain of the barely recalled interim project.

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