Jacob Alon: In Limerence review – dreamy story songs of myth and melancholy

(Island)
The Scottish songwriter delivers a confident, well-expressed debut even if their songs sometimes stray into overfamiliar indie-folk territory

The title of Scottish indie-folk musician Jacob Alon’s delicate debut album may seem ironic: the phrase describes an intense kind of desire, and Alon’s music can be shatteringly desolate and lonely, their voice and fingerpicked guitar conveying isolation and introversion with raw clarity. But In Limerence makes a strong case for its name: isn’t desire, Alon seems to ask, one of the most incurably lonely feelings of all? These story songs – about youthful infatuation, reckless hedonism and one-sided obsession – are brittle and wounded, each zeroing in on a different strain of disappointment or heartache.

Alon was born in Dunfermline, Fife, a city tucked between pockets of forest, and they play up the organic, semi-mystical nature of their music, performing in wings and Midsummer Night’s Dream-esque wreaths; In Limerence’s lyric sheet is filled with references to the cosmos, mythology and folklore. You can sense their fealty to Sufjan Stevens, who has also performed wearing wings and peppers his queer love songs with dense literary references.