Spotlight On... Jacob Alon
Following their appearance on Later... With Jools Holland, and with the release of their single Confession earlier in the week, we catch up with Jacob Alon
Jacob Alon makes the kind of music that stops you in your tracks. Songs begin as gently intricate guitar works, and when Alon sing you forget everything else that’s going on around you. Alon's music evokes all the usual cliches – ‘spine-tingling’, ‘goosebump-inducing’, ‘you could hear a pin drop’ – but all with good reason. Calling to mind artists like Nick Drake, Jeff Buckley and Rufus Wainwright, Alon's voice is unreal, but it's the way they use it, bending into shapes that make you unexpectedly well up as your jaw drops.
Born in Fife but based in Edinburgh, Alon released their debut single Fairy In a Bottle in September, going on to perform it on Later… With Jools Holland at the weekend. Delivering a performance you could describe with all of those aforementioned cliches, on Monday they released their second single, the equally captivating and heartstring-tugging Confession, further demonstrating Alon's incredible ability to make you feel deeply. We catch up with Alon to find out more about their experiences so far, while looking to the future.
What a year you’re having; your two singles are so unbelievably beautiful. Can you tell us a bit more about your music practice, and who/what inspired you to become a musician?
No one necessarily inspired me to become a musician. I sort of rebelled into it... We lived in a very quiet household growing up. My mum would very rarely play the out-of-tune piano in our kitchen when I was very young – and the patterns fascinated me. She taught me my first song which sparked a journey of self-learning from there. But I resisted the idea of it as anything serious for a long time. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a dentist or a mathematician, and I never thought it possible to make a career out of expressing myself. I suppose I didn’t believe in myself very much. And despite the joy music brought me, I didn’t give it my full heart for a long time. It wasn’t until a deep depression choked me out of a career in medicine that I finally realised the thing that brings me true joy and purpose had been in front of me the whole time. So I chucked the textbooks and picked up my guitar.
You just performed your incredible debut single, Fairy in a Bottle, on Later… with Jools Holland. What an experience that must have been for you? Can you tell us more about it, and how did the opportunity come about?
It was truly the most surreal experience of my life. To be on the telly and playing in the same room as so many of my heroes have. What a wild and wonderful treat. I only found out I was booked to play for it the week before it was to be filmed… it was a massive shock and still is. I think someone on Jools’ team caught wind of my song, showed it to him, and he really liked it! IRL, Jools is a very sweet man.
Your performance was nothing short of awe-inspiring; your vocal delivery is just so overflowing with emotion that seems so effortless. On your latest single, Confession, the way you sing ‘oh how I loved you’ towards the end genuinely made me cry the first time I heard it. It’s so tender and vulnerable, but with so much strength behind it. Can you tell us more about Confession, and what it’s about?
Thank you so much, I’m so grateful that it touched you and that you felt that from it… wow. Confession, to me, is a shedding of shame. It’s a soft hand tracing the stretch marks left behind by a once messy, awkward, painful, and frightening realisation of my queerness.
It’s a memory of the unspoken ways in which my heart and body knew how to move; knew how to draw in close under a cloak of darkness to bridge canyons of hatred and fear with acts of love. A love that was once silent; that once grew from the shadows, voiceless, in a vacuum of denial and shame. A love that, even without air, moved on its own. Squeezing up through the smallest cracks. Chipping little stones at my window. Showing me how fast my heart could really go.
I think of the lyrics to this song as a final offering; both to someone I had loved so long ago and to the small, scared, beautiful little child in me that had so much love to give. I honour that love now: the love which once made me feel so alone, but now holds me, connects me to so many beautiful, colourful souls all over the world. The love that makes me strong and beautiful and unique. The love I feel lucky to still have left to give. And I want to keep giving it. To my bonnie, boundless, infinite queers. This song is for you.
Dan Carey produced the single. I love the way he’s managed to capture you in what feels like an incredibly authentic way – what was it like working with Dan?
Like a dream I didn’t want to wake up from. We lived in our own little world together for a short, magical time. I stayed at his house while we recorded the tracks and, in the mornings, he’d wake me up with a strong cup of coffee and we’d tell each other about the crazy dreams we had both had the previous night. Mine were often deeply disturbing and abstract. And his were prescient and revelatory, often inspiring new ways for us to approach recording parts of the songs. I feel so lucky to have Dan as my friend.
With the new single out now, you’ve just announced a run of shows in January – what can people expect from the tour, is there more new music to come, and how are you feeling about the future?
You can expect a bloody fabulous time, my darlings. There’s so much more music on the way and I just can’t wait for it to meet you all. On this tour, I’m looking forward to connecting with so many new souls in so many new places and I hope to take at least one risk for each night’s performance. I’m buzzed to bring my dear band, The Bussywillows, and a string of brilliant pals along with me for a few dates, but also really looking forward to the more intimate solo shows.
I’m very grateful to feel hopeful for the future as we come to the close of this year. I think it’s something that’s difficult to feel at the moment in the face of so much suffering and injustice in the world, but it’s a precious privilege to have a voice to use and a heart to give, and I want to keep using and giving mine to what’s right, as much as I can. And until we’re deed, no one can take that away from us. I believe in love, I really do. And I want to keep fighting for it. Free fucking Palestine!
Confession is out now; Jacob Alon tours between 17 and 31 January, including The Caves, Edinburgh, 29 Jan; King Tut's, Glasgow, 31 Jan
Follow Jacob Alon on Instagram @jacobal0n