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With the exception of Harry Styles, individual artistic journeys of former members of televised singing competition groups rarely capture the audience's attention. They usually follow predictable patterns – often a pursuit at a toughened-up R&B sound, replete with at least one single featuring a guest appearance by an American rapper, or a move into “grownup” Radio 2-friendly smooth pop-rock territory – and they usually amount to a barely recalled interim project, the visual and auditory experience of someone enthusiastically passing the years prior to the unavoidable band comeback concerts.

A Unique Journey

This common scenario that makes the idiosyncratic path currently taken by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She’s certainly not above engaging in the typical activities that ex-reality TV group artists are known for undertaking, among them loudly underlining that she’s no longer subject the media-trained constraints of the manufactured pop industry – judging by the audience this evening, the top-selling product on the official goods stand is a fan emblazoned with the phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from the track Gossip, her collaboration with dance duo the group Confidence Man – but regardless, the music she’s opted to make is pop of a noticeably more intriguing stripe than usual.

An Impressive First Single

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

As the set on her first solo tour proves, not every song on her first full-length release her album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as that: Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it’s also typical dancefloor-oriented pop, powered by exactly the Supremes sample the name implies; things are padded out with a interpretation of Madonna’s Frozen that devolves into a medley of nineties club anthems, from the track Pacific State by 808 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 offer a borderline atonal style of rhythmic music or are surrounded with deep reverberation. She offers Unconditional to her mum: it has a fabulous melody, eighties-style electronic percussion, and crashing rock guitar allied to metallic pounding beats. IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the sound of 2000s electronic punk movement, 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.

A Charming Performer

The woman at its centre is a immensely likable, delightfully authentic figure: she is, she states at a certain moment, “shaking like a shitting dog”; giving a shoutout to her queer audience members, who are here in force, she suggests thanking them by including a official undergarment to the merchandise booth.

What Lies Ahead

It could conclude the way these kind of solo careers typically finish – the enmity towards ex-group member Jesy Nelson expressed in Natural at Disaster patched up, a press conference to declare that the original group are back – but the reality that every attendee seem to be knowing every lyric as they join in vocally to an album that only came out a month ago causes one to ponder. And even if it does, the final performance of Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Thirlwall’s solo career is not destined to fade into the realms of the barely recalled interim project.

• Jade plays the O2 Victoria Warehouse in the city of Manchester this evening and is traveling across the United Kingdom through October 23rd.