Meet Jacob Alon, the singer exploring fantasies of imagined love

If you watch Jacob Alon’s recent performance on Later… with Jools Holland, you’ll notice the mystical, sprite-like qualities they display. It’s evident in their small, slight frame, but even more so in the bare feet and the skirt made from golden feathers on display as they sit atop a stool and pluck at an acoustic guitar.

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.

You dropped out of medical school to do music. Does that mean this is the path you were always meant to be on?

Well I was very much trying to not do this and I just never saw it as an option. It was always something I carried with me but I felt like I owed it to the world and maybe to my family to do the thing that could do the most good – which was medicine.

But I think the reality of that lifestyle when I was in it was that I just became so miserable and I was just not in the right world. It’s a very hard profession and I commend anyone that is able to do it, but it just wasn’t right for me. I realised I was living someone else’s dream and I was trying to be exceptional to get approval. I think part of me just wanted to be seen and wanted to be loved and I didn’t feel like I could get that from doing anything less than the best thing I could do.

I didn’t do music straight away after that, but I went and studied theoretical physics. And that, again, really interested me and excited me. But I think some part of me still wanted to prove that I was enough and lockdown gave me time to reflect. I realised this wasn’t the life I was meant to be living. Music was there all along and I just didn’t pay attention, but I think she was always taking care of me, and definitely saved my life when I was really struggling.

So I packed in the textbooks, picked up the guitar, lived in a van and played around the folk bars and that really nurtured my heart. When I think about it now, I’m just so sure that this is where I’m meant to be.