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With the exception of Harry Styles, individual artistic journeys of former members of TV talent show-manufactured bands rarely capture the public imagination. These efforts typically adhere to certain rules – often a pursuit at a more edgy urban music style, replete with at least a track including a cameo by an US hip-hop artist, or a move into “grownup” mainstream-approved polished adult contemporary – and they typically become a dimly remembered placeholder, the sight and sound of someone enthusiastically passing the years prior to the unavoidable band comeback concerts.

An Idiosyncratic Path

It’s a state of affairs that makes the idiosyncratic path thus far followed by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall surprisingly refreshing. She’s certainly not above doing the kind of things that ex-reality TV group artists are known for undertaking, including emphatically stating that she’s no longer subject the press-managed restrictions of the manufactured pop industry – based on the audience this evening, the most popular item on the merchandise stall is a handheld cooling device emblazoned with the phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from the track Gossip, her collaboration with dance duo Confidence Man – but regardless, 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 last year’s superb Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jolting and disjointed mixture of grand emotional pop songs, noisy synthesisers and audio excerpts from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

As the set on her initial individual concert series demonstrates, not everything on her first full-length release 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 also standard-issue disco pop, powered by precisely the Motown musical snippet the name implies; things are padded out with a cover of the Madonna classic Frozen that devolves into a medley of 90s dance hits, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.

More Intriguing Material

However, there exists additional where Angel Of My Dreams came from. Headache melds an Abba-esque chorus with verses that present a borderline atonal style of rhythmic music or are enfolded by cavernous echo. She offers the track Unconditional to her mother: it features a wonderful tune, eighties-style electronic percussion, and crashing rock guitar combined with clanging industrial drums. The song IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the musical aesthetic of 2000s electronic punk movement, or rather the exciting variation of millennium-era popular music that was strongly inspired by the electroclash genre, while the track Natural at Disaster begins like a keyboard-led emotional song before unexpectedly swerving into a malevolent electronic grind.

An Appealing Presence

The artist on stage is a hugely appealing, delightfully authentic figure: she declares, she states at one point, “trembling uncontrollably”; shouting out her queer audience members, who are here in force, she suggests showing appreciation by including a branded jockstrap to the merchandise booth.

What Lies Ahead

It may well end the way these kind of solo careers end – the enmity towards ex-group member Jesy Nelson voiced within Natural at Disaster resolved, a press conference to declare that the original group are back – but the fact that the entire audience appear word-perfect as they sing along to a record that only came out a few weeks prior makes you wonder. And even if it does, the final Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Jade's individual musical path is unlikely to recede into the domain of the barely recalled interim project.

• Jade performs at the O2 Victoria Warehouse in the city of Manchester tonight and is traveling across the United Kingdom until 23 October.