Jacob Alon: Free-spirited folk singer is one to watch

Jacob Alon's fingernails are something else.

Their left hand is beautifully manicured in sparkling purple and royal blue. On their right, the nails are like talons, sharpened to a menacing point.

The Scottish singer-songwriter nurtured those claws as a teenager, after discovering a dusty nylon-stringed guitar in a cupboard at their grandmother's house.

"I was always very clumsy with a plectrum," they say. "Growing out my nails changed entirely how I played the guitar."

"It probably started with trying to copy Nick Drake from YouTube. I suddenly felt intimately connected to the instrument.

"It feels like the guitar doesn't stop – it extends into my anatomy. That visceral connection is very special to me."

If you haven't heard of Jacob yet, it won't be long.

When they sing, time stops.

Tremulous vocals curl around the music like smoke, as the 24-year-old, who identifies as non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, traces poetic stories of romantic exploration and broken hearts.

As a writer, Jacob can be equally tender and ruthless. On Liquid Gold 25, named after a brand of poppers, they tackle the soul-crushing experience of queer dating apps like Grindr, singing: "This is where love comes to die."

The fragile melody of Confession, meanwhile, captures the crushing confusion Jacob felt when an ex-boyfriend denied their relationship had ever happened.

"It was such a deep rejection," they recall. "I was so confused that [they] couldn't come to with how they'd felt once, under all the layers of tragic, tragic shame that are imposed on you by the world."

That feeling of being trapped in limbo, controlled by a confusing dream-like logic, is a running theme of Jacob's debut album.

It's titled In Limerence, referring to a state of romantic infatuation that the singer's often trying to escape.

"There can be a darker side to dreams as a prison of fantasy – especially within relationships," they explain.

"Sometimes you cling to dreams so tightly that you lose sight of the magic of the real world."

On their debut single, Fairy In A Bottle, Jacob embodies that idea as a warning.

When you idolise your partner, you can't really know them, "because you've trapped them in this mythical version of themselves," they explain.

"You look past all of their flaws, and reasons it would never work."

The song is a realisation of that truth. "It's not your fault, it's my disease / And I must learn to set you free."

The musician learned those lessons the hard way – something that appears to have been a life-long pattern.

Raised in Fife, with its tawny beaches and sleepy fishing villages, a career in music was a distant dream.

"I a family member telling me, as a child, I'd be a poor fool to ever become a musician. And it stuck with me."

Instead, they took the academic route out, enrolling to study theoretical physics and medicine at Edinburgh University.

It didn't go well.

"I was so miserable," they recall. "I'd always found school really fulfilling and satisfying but university was really stifling. I realised that a life within academia didn't foster the same sense of curiosity about the universe that I'd felt going in."

It all came to a head when they crashed out on the floor of the university library, while desperately trying to cram for an exam.

"I sleeping between book shelves and the security guards kept waking me going, 'You can't sleep here, go home'.

"So I'd move to another room and they'd come and find me there too. I thinking, 'What am I doing with my life":[]}