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With the exception of Harry Styles, the solo careers of former members of TV talent show-manufactured bands rarely capture the audience's attention. These efforts typically adhere to predictable patterns – often a pursuit at a more edgy urban music style, replete with at least a track including a guest appearance by an US hip-hop artist, or a lunge towards 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 prior to the unavoidable reunion tour.

A Unique Journey

This common scenario that makes the idiosyncratic path thus far followed by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall surprisingly refreshing. She’s certainly not above doing the kind of things that former talent show band members are known for undertaking, among them emphatically stating that she’s no longer subject the press-managed restrictions of the manufactured pop industry – based on tonight’s crowd, the top-selling product on the official goods stand is a fan emblazoned with the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from the track Gossip, her collaboration with electronic pair the group Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the songs she has chosen to create is pop music with a far more fascinating style than the norm.

An Impressive First Single

She launched her individual career with the previous year's excellent her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jarring and disjointed melange of grand emotional pop songs, loud electronic instruments 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 everything on her debut album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as that: the track Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it’s also typical dancefloor-oriented pop, driven by precisely the Supremes sample its title suggests; the show is extended with a cover of the Madonna classic Frozen that transforms into a medley of nineties club anthems, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.

Additional Fascinating Content

But there’s also more where Angel Of My Dreams came from. The song Headache combines an Abba-esque chorus with song sections that present a borderline atonal brand of funk or are enfolded by cavernous echo. She dedicates the track Unconditional to her mum: it features a wonderful tune, early 80s syndrums, and crashing rock guitar allied to clanging industrial drums. The song IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the musical aesthetic of early 00s electroclash, or rather the exciting variation of millennium-era popular music that was strongly inspired by the electroclash genre, while Natural at Disaster begins like a keyboard-led emotional song before suddenly shifting into a malevolent electronic grind.

An Appealing Presence

The artist on stage is a hugely appealing, delightfully authentic presence: she declares, she states at a certain moment, “trembling uncontrollably”; shouting out her queer audience members, who are here in force, she suggests thanking them by adding a official undergarment to the merch stand.

Future Possibilities

It may well end the manner such individual artistic pursuits typically finish – the enmity towards former bandmate Jesy Nelson expressed in the song Natural at Disaster resolved, a press conference to announce that the original group are back – but the reality that every attendee appear knowing every lyric as they sing along to an album that only came out a month ago makes you wonder. And even if it does, the closing Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Thirlwall’s solo career is unlikely to recede into the realms of the dimly remembered placeholder.

• Jade plays the O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester this evening and is touring the UK until 23 October.