FEATURE:
Spotlight
Jacob Alon
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I am quite new to their music…
though I have been struck by the brilliance of Jacob Alon. Drawing comparisons to artists such as Jeff Buckley, they have released brilliant singles like Fairy in a Bottle and Liquid Gold 25. Even if it early days for Alon, they are proving themselves to be a formidable talent. I want to bring in a few fair recent interviews, where we can find out more. Rather than me do most of the talking, I want to let others do that. First, The Independent spoke with Jacob Alon. They discussed loneliness in the queer community, an ill-fated venture into medicine and what comes next:
“Raised in Fife, with its yawning coastal paths and clusters of fishing villages, Alon was a self-described radge (Scottish slang for a tearaway) before they found music. Aged nine, they asked their mother to teach them a song on the piano. That song was “Right Here Waiting”, the forlorn Eighties ballad by American singer Richard Marx; Alon’s performance of it earned them second place in a school talent show. “That moment felt really special – performing was a really electric thing,” Alon says. From there, they went on to form bands with names like The Pleaser Tweezers and Tramadol Nation – playing silly songs to make their friends laugh – but harboured no real ambitions of a career as an artist.
“I think it’s quite a Scottish mentality, but especially in Fife, there’s a low ceiling on what you can dream for,” Alon says. “I always felt that being a musician wasn’t possible for someone like me, and that I should be realistic.” Certain family members discouraged them, too, and so Alon opted to study medicine in Edinburgh instead.
“I really struggled to fit in, even though I loved so many parts of it,” they say. “The university environment is f***ed up. But I think what made me most miserable, and I didn’t know it at the time, was living someone else’s dream. I had music in me – a voice, an honesty – that hadn’t bloomed yet.” They smile, a little. “I’m still blooming.”
It was that incident with the “c*** of a cardiologist” that put Alon off medicine for good. “I think he wanted to make an example of me, to make me feel small,” they recall. “He succeeded. I felt awful, and I didn’t fight back. I wish I’d slapped his face!” They returned to class after his outburst, thinking this would be their life from now on. “It forced me to take a step back and realise I didn’t want to be in this environment.”
Alon stuck it out for the rest of the year before switching to theoretical physics. Then Covid hit, and with it another round of existential second-guessing. “It was the same thing, where I realised I was miserable. Like, ‘What the f*** am I doing?’ I’m meant to love this, but I hate it”.
So, they quit and, for the past few years, have found the songs pouring out of them. One such being “Confession”, an extraordinary track of delicately plucked guitars and Alon’s gossamer voice. “We were only fourteen/ Wild, wide eyes/ Pledging our virtues between holy crimes,” they croon. “We’d drink ourselves naked/ Swallowing the shame/ Stirring in the silence/ Tangling our brains.”
They became a regular on Edinburgh’s folk scene, singing with grizzled sea dogs and young pups in the Captain’s Bar while scraping a living in a local cafe. Alon signed with a manager and then to Island Records, who paired them with producer Dan Carey – which might seem an odd choice to those who know the Speedy Wunderground co-founder for his work with scowling rockers like Fontaines DC and Black Midi. But it’s a stroke of genius to those familiar with Carey’s earlier work, on songs such as Sia’s 2004 piano hymnal “Breathe Me” or Emiliana Torrini’s 2005 album, Fisherman’s Woman.
Alon crashed with Carey while working on new music, of which an overarching theme will be limerence: the state of intense romantic longing for someone who often does not reciprocate. Those who have experienced limerence will know it can lead to obsessive thoughts – an infatuation that overlooks any flaws or, indeed, turns those flaws into an attractive trait. “It’s nice meeting people who are in the know, because it feels like an inner circle of self-awareness,” Alon says with a laugh. We should all get tattoos, I suggest.
“Therapy is helping but also making art – it’s like getting something out of you,” they say. An exorcism, then. I mention a feeling of being haunted by the idea of someone, as though they’re lurking around every corner of your mind, just out of reach. “Yes, and the glimmer hits and you see them suddenly, then project this fantasy onto them,” Alon says. “Ultimately you have to accept that this person is dead… because they never existed. It really feels like you created and then killed this thing.” It’s a precious gift that Alon has, bottling these indefinable feelings, then releasing them with the sweetness of a sigh. It’s a kind of magic, even”.
I am going to move to an interview from Rolling Stone. It is clear that Jacob Alon is such a distinct talent. Someone who very much stands out. That may seem isolating, though I know Alon is giving plenty of inspiration to others. I can see a lot of good things in their future. A debut album cannot be too far away. It will be fascinating to see what that sounds like:
“It’s an otherworldly presentation and one at sharp odds with the song they’re playing. The stunning ‘Fairy in a Bottle’ is a soul-baring ode to broken spirits and ones that got away. “It’s not your fault, it’s my disease and I must learn to set you free,” they gently coo.
There’s subtle shades of Nick Drake in there, but Alon’s journey is entirely their own too – forging a musical career in the folk clubs of Fife after dropping out of medical school. Now, they’re on the way to becoming a distinctive and powerful voice within that world.
You emerged recently with debut single ‘Fairy in a Bottle’. How’s the reaction been and what’s the next step for you?
It’s been great. Yesterday was the last day in the studio and I’ve been working on quite a bit of stuff with Dan Carey but it was all done in quite a short period of time. The creative juices were flowing very quickly. There’s this one song that was eluding me for a long time and I finally managed to finish it yesterday at half five in the morning and I brought it into the studio and we did it and it just feels like this big accomplishment. I’m so excited about it and I can’t wait to share it at some point. It’s my favourite one now and I’m just so glad it’s done.
For the first time in my life it feels like I’m not looking backwards and I’m not looking forwards with a fear or dread. It’s just hope, and it’s a really valuable thing to feel and that feels like a privilege because there’s so much shit going on in the world, so it would be the natural reaction not to feel very hopeful.
It is a big privilege to have something to hold on to for now. I’m trying to practice gratitude because I know this moment won’t be forever and there will be patches of doubt very quickly, I’m sure. But for now I just feel so certain that this is where I’m meant to be.
What were those periods of self-doubt like, and did they feed into your artistry at all?
We’ve all experienced some form of it, but I’ve lived in that flux of belief and doubt and it probably kept me from pursuing music for so long as I didn’t really have faith in myself. External praise can be a fragile thing, but it has been really nice to have had nice reactions and people telling me my music has meant something to them.
I hope I don’t lose a sense of self-doubt entirely because it can be valuable, but I hope that I get better at trusting myself too, and I hope that I can let people know that it’s OK to feel that. It’s incredibly reassuring speaking to other musicians and knowing they feel that too. It’s a very human thing.
This interview is for our Play Next series where we introduce people to artists that we love and give them a chance to introduce themselves. How would you describe yourself and your music, Jacob?
I sometimes vary my answers but I would say right now I’m making music that explores the fantasies of imagined love and putting your heart in a world of dreams and the fallout that can come from always striving for something you can never have.
I think there’s a lot of queer threads embedded into my work and that’s something I’m exploring too. I’m also just figuring it out as I go along. The two singles you’ve heard (‘Fairy in a Bottle’ and ‘Confession’) are the more stripped back ones on the record, the most raw and direct. The ones that are coming are a bit more experimental and fun and I’m really excited for those.
You mentioned the idea of queer artistry. How important to you is it to have that in your music and tell those stories?
It’s essential to who I am and it’s such a liberation to be able to find a voice in it. When growing up I felt somewhat caged, [so] I think it brings connection to my community and the people I surround myself with through music. To have music without queerness wouldn’t make sense in my art.
I think that music in itself and its nature is quite queer, especially a lot of the music that pushes boundaries, whether it directly originates from a queer subculture or it just has the attitude of something that wants to be entirely at odds with what’s going on elsewhere”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Emma Swann
I am going to end with a feature from DIY. Even if there is very little out there from Jacob Alon, what has been released has made a giant impact. Such powerful and moving music. They are an artist, as DIY write, that writes “emotionally-flooring, community-fostering gems that cult heroes are made of”:
“Riddled with a lack of self-belief and in pursuit of the approval of their family, Jacob set about studying for a career in medicine. Clearly an ill fit, the way they speak of that period of self-supression is heartbreaking. “When it comes to love, it’s very conditional in my family. I think part of me just really wanted to be loved and to be seen, and I thought the only way I could feel that is if I was exceptional or the best or if I saved the world. But I just don’t think anyone should carry that on their shoulders,” they say, softly. “I became really depressed and I just didn’t have the words to say: ‘I’m here. I’ve worked hard to be here. Why am I not happy?’ And I think it was just part of my soul that knew I was living my life for someone else.”
Eventually, during lockdown, they finally made the decision to quit and, bolstered by the support of their new chosen musical family, give their art a real go. “I just felt like I was wasting away and it was there the whole time: music had always been the companion,” they say. “For my whole life, I’ve looked back and reminisced and worried about the future, but for the first time I’m just certain that this is where I should be. And it feels like I’m making an impact through this; I don’t know why I never thought that could be a thing…”
Delicate and raw, filled with the pain of lived experience but drenched in the beauty of someone who still wholeheartedly believes in hope, from debut single ‘Fairy In A Bottle’ - a finger-picked well of Jeff Buckley-like emotion - Jacob’s music has immediately been resonating in all the ways they used to think impossible. Last month, they joined a rare cohort of musicians to have been invited to perform on Later… with Jools Holland with only one song to their name. The experience, they say, was “magic”, but writing the song itself was an even bigger release.
“In some ways it was the scariest one to start with, which is maybe why it was right. To me, it encapsulates the essence of this project - it highlights very directly a feeling I’ve been discovering and working through,” they explain. “I have this affinity to the world of dreams and the world of fantasy - sometimes to my detriment - and I think through trying to protect myself from pain, I chase the things I know I can’t have. My whole life, I’ve thought of love the wrong way and I think a lot of people can relate to that.”
They’ve described hushed and tender follow-up ‘Confessions’ as “a soft hand tracing the stretch marks left behind by a once messy, awkward, painful, and frightening realisation of my queerness”, and it’s to this community that Jacob hopes to provide a particular solace. There is, they say, a constant friction that comes from living as a queer person in the world. “Sometimes it feels like no matter how much we come to terms with things, the world doesn’t feel like we fit into it. We confront those feelings every day in small moments, and sometimes that’s internal but a lot of the time it’s the world that tells you in its subtleties,” they say. “And that might not just be a dirty look or someone beating the fuck out of you, sometimes it can just be in not seeing someone like you represented anywhere.”
For Jacob, seeing flashes of an alternative way to be was monumental. “Bowie was really instrumental in influencing me,” they nod. “I remember seeing him when I was 13 and thinking, ‘Wow, that’s allowed?’ It just unlocked something.” With a third single - a new flavour with “a lot of stomp and sass to it” - due in January, their first UK tour the same month and an album on the way, their hope is that, having helped find a light within themself, their music will do the same for others needing a hand in the darkness.
“Seeing people like Chappell Roan today, and these amazing queer figures that are so mainstream versus when I was growing up and it was all Top Of The Pops and X Factor where there was a certain type of celebrity that was designed to feed the most masses, it’s amazing,” they say. “It’s amazing when you stand with your community and you can see these [things trickling down]. Particularly people of colour in the trans and drag world who’ve just fought so much and made so much change - it’s great because now the world’s better! It works! I’ve got hope, and even now when it’s really hard in the world, I believe in love, I really, really do”.
I don’t think you need to be a fan of a particular style of music to appreciate Jacob Alon. Their music is very much everyone, though there is something particularly striking and meaningful perhaps for those on the outside. Those who feel unheard, alone or isolated. This Scottish sensation is rightly turning head and dropping jaws. They are well and truly…
A national treasure.
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