Jacob Alon – In Limerence

Jacob Alon’s passion for music started with the discovery of an acoustic guitar that had been stowed away in their grandmother’s dusty cupboard. But Alon’s route to recording their debut album was more circuitous than it might have been. A commitment to music was preceded by unrewarding stints at medical school and the study of theoretical physics. Ventures pursued, Alon later reflected, to the benefit of others rather than themselves. 

In Limerence then is the product of deliberate action and agency. Alon’s fingerpicked playing sounds like busy spiders scuttling up and down the guitar's neck in search of a new home, as if Alon were still playing the instrument they found in their grandmother’s cupboard and had just swiped away the cobwebs. Their playing, honed from show after show on Edinburgh’s folk circuit, is backed by twitching drums, rhythms and clicks that bring all the warmth of an episode of Detectorists. But the contentment and reconciliation of these songs is hard fought for. 

Confessions, for example, is ultimately about acceptance. Alon says they wrote it for a younger version of themselves who was just beginning to understand their queerness. But Alon describes scenes with a narrator still despairing: ‘Snorting cocaine and bleeding out the truth’. They end the song repeating ‘I loved you’ in the rawest way towards someone who presumably didn’t love them back. Don’t Fall Asleep is written from the perspective of Alon’s cousin who tragically drowned before Alon was born. Despite the song’s tragic kernel, its message is to believe in the real world and to not get lost in a dream one. The way they usher in the chorus with encouragement to ‘Stay awake and watch the flowers grow / Green and indigo’, you'd trust Alon no matter what they told you. 

Alon’s voice is the central weight that everything else orbits around. Like Thom Yorke. they stretch their vowels out until they're thin, laid over us in a high tenor. Other times they're hazed and weary, like on August Moon and Sertraline. Sometimes Alon's voice wobbles in the way that Orlando Weeks’ or Adrianne Lenker’s might. That is perhaps inevitable given the honesty of this record. In Limerence is a debut album that is at once confident and vulnerable. That interchange and trade-off is presented most clearly in the lyrics of Sertraline: ‘You’re tired / Well who isn’t, babe / It’s the price for being awake’.

Listen to: Don’t Fall Asleep, Elijah, August Moon