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Harry Styles aside, the solo careers of former members of televised singing competition groups seldom grip the audience's attention. They usually follow predictable patterns – often a pursuit at a toughened-up R&B sound, complete with at least one single including a cameo by an US hip-hop artist, or a lunge towards mature Radio 2-friendly smooth pop-rock territory – and they usually amount to a barely recalled interim project, the sight and sound of someone gamely killing time prior to the unavoidable reunion tour.

A Unique Journey

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, among them loudly underlining that she's free from the media-trained constraints of the factory-produced music business – based on the audience this evening, the top-selling product 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 Confidence Man – but regardless, the songs she has chosen to create is pop of a noticeably more intriguing stripe than usual.

An Impressive First Single

She opened her solo account with last year’s superb her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jolting and fragmented mixture of grand emotional pop songs, noisy synthesisers and audio excerpts 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 That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as that: Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it’s also standard-issue disco pop, driven by exactly the Motown musical snippet its title suggests; things are padded out with a interpretation of the Madonna classic Frozen that devolves into a musical compilation of 90s dance hits, from 808’s Pacific State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.

More Intriguing Material

However, there exists additional where Angel Of My Dreams came from. Headache combines an Abba-esque chorus with verses that present a nearly discordant style of rhythmic music or are enfolded by cavernous echo. She dedicates Unconditional to her mother: it has a wonderful tune, early 80s syndrums, and powerful guitar riffs allied to clanging industrial drums. IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the sound of 2000s electronic punk movement, or rather the exciting variation of early 00s pop that was strongly inspired by electroclash, while Natural at Disaster starts out like a keyboard-led emotional song before unexpectedly swerving into a dark computerized noise.

An Appealing Presence

The woman at its centre is a immensely likable, delightfully authentic presence: she is, she announces at one point, “shaking like a shitting dog”; shouting out her queer audience members, who are present in large numbers, she proposes thanking them by adding a official undergarment to the merch stand.

Future Possibilities

It could conclude the way these kind of solo careers end – the enmity towards ex-group member Jesy Nelson voiced within the song Natural at Disaster patched up, a media announcement to declare that Little Mix are reunited – but the fact that the entire audience seem to be word-perfect as they sing along to a record that only came out a month ago causes one to ponder. And should it occur, the closing Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Jade's individual musical path 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 until 23 October.