The Scottish singer Jacob Alon, 24, is a phenom. Luckily for Austin, he was at SXSW, performing a magical set at St. David’s church on 8th Street on March 14.
Alon identifies as non-binary, and prefers the pronoun “their” instead of “his.” In keeping with the current government policy in this country, I will use “his.”
One of several songs he played was Confession. To the plucking of guitar strings, he sang “We were only fourteen/ Wild, wide eyes/ Pledging our virtues between holy crimes. “We’d drink ourselves naked/ Swallowing the shame/ Stirring in the silence/ Tangling our brains.”
Alon played the guitar (which he first began at age 15) for every number, except for one on which he played the piano. To quote from the SXSW site, “Alon was born and raised by a single mother in the quiet suburbs of Dunfermline, Fife, between the winding woods and industrial park mystics. Alon began writing songs in school as a way of making friends laugh but never considered a career in music possible until much later. While studying medicine at university, Alon was deeply confused and unhappy, only finding joy when making music.”
An overarching theme of the music he is working on is limerence: the state of intense romantic longing for someone who often does not reciprocate. With his ethereal voice, Alon is uniquely placed to project the sensibility of this umbilically-challenged state of affairs.
His final number, Fairy in a Bottle, embodied this concept of limerence, which he described as “a state of obsessive attraction to an idea of someone. You never get to actually know someone, because you’ve trapped them in this mythical version of themselves. You look past all of their flaws, and reasons it would never work. I want to spread that name as far as I can. Limerance, limerence! I’ll be screaming it up and down the street,” he said jokingly.
This was Alon’s first visit to Austin. “I was really scared to come considering everything that is going on, but everyone here has been so nice.”
Alon’s debut album is due in a few months, so it was a real treat to see a Scot near the beginning of what will surely be a notable recording career. Printed below is a postcard available at his concert, “a portal into my wee world.”
You can watch Alon sing Fairy in a Bottle at the link below:
The official music video for Confession is at this link:
Lead Photo of Alon is by Dr C Cunningham, copyright SunNewsAustin.com
For a recent interview with Alon, read this article in The Independent, a UK newspaper: