\n Let\u2019s go overboard straight away for Jacob Alon. They are going to be huge<\/a>\n<\/p>\n \n Scots singer Jacob Alon on their chaotic family life and queer beauty<\/a>\n<\/p>\n \n Scottish folk singer among artists nominated for 2025 Mercury Prize<\/a>\n<\/p>\n \n And there is clearly much to celebrate. Alon is an electric performer; their guitar-playing both delicate and insistent at the same time, the songs often breathtaking in their emotional nakedness and that voice, both soaring and seductive. In a fervid moment – as the vocals took flight once more – I had the heretic, hyperbolic notion that Alon completes the holy trinity of Scottish pop voices alongside Billy Mackenzie and Elizabeth Fraser.\n<\/p>\n \n That said, Alon’s thrilling one-offness offers a challenge too. When the rest of the band came onstage – after a few songs of just the singer and guitar – their joint efforts initially rather tamped things down; not because of any failings of their musicianship, but because the sound was suddenly more conventional.\n<\/p>\n \n That said, by the time Alon essayed Confession – a song about young queer love and loss, and one of Alon\u2019s best – you could hear just how much the three musicians added; filling out and enriching what was already powerful.\n<\/p>\n \n In some ways, this was a slightly messy gig. Tuning the guitar proved problematic, there were a couple of fluffed lines, and when Alon started to perform a newly written song – the first time they\u2019ve ever played it live – they had to stop and start again after forgetting the lyrics. \u201cI\u2019ll need to practice that a few more times,\u201d the singer admitted, smiling.\n<\/p>\n \n \n Alon is not a raconteur for the most part. Spoken introductions were kept to a minimum. \u201cThis is all about Grindr,\u201d they do tell us before singing Liquid Gold. That was one of the longer introductions.\n<\/p>\n \n But at the end of the evening Alon offered up a speech that was both angry and loving.\n<\/p>\n \n \u201cThe past two years the world has been absolutely mental,\u201d they began.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n \n \u201cIt\u2019s hard sometimes to be joyful in such terrifying times. The genocide is still going on at the hands of Israel<\/a> in Palestine<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n \n \u201cIf I think about it for too long I just want to fold and fold and fold away until I\u2019m smaller than a speck of dust. But we\u2019re still here. We still have our voices.\n<\/p>\n \n \u201cIt\u2019s all connected as well. The erasure of trans rights and queer rights, the targeting of minorities, racism, it\u2019s all part of the same thing. It\u2019s all a distraction to keep the wealthiest wealthy and keep us down.\n<\/p>\n \n \u201cI know that feels very obvious to a lot of us, but it doesn\u2019t make it any easier to cope with.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n What can anyone do in the face of this? What Alon does, I guess. Use your voice.\n<\/p>\n \n And so the singer stands alone and sings Fairy in a Bottle, their breakout tune, and that voice rises one final time to the vaulted roof. It\u2019s a privilege to hear it.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After releasing a debut album, In Limerence, at the end of May, the singer-songwriter from Fife has toured…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":617680,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7826],"tags":[748,918,4884,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-617679","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-glasgow","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-glasgow","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-scotland","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115677682915625130","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=617679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/617680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=617679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=617679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=617679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Artist and songwriter Jacob Alon in their hometown of Dunfermline (Image: Newsquest)\n<\/p>\n