Photo credit: Jules Moskovtchenko
Limerence is the feeling of infatuated love, the often involuntary, obsessive kind that drives teenage Capulets to drink poison. It’s an appropriate title for the debut album from a singer songwriter who can delve so deeply into the dark little foibles of feelings.
It’s a fairly simple album on the surface; classic guitar-led singer-songwriter fare with the occasional swell of slide guitar or heartbeat of brushy percussion. What really sets this apart, what stops the listener in their tracks is Alon themselves – their tender, yearning falsetto and their incredible insight into the difficult unspoken parts of being a human. This is an album populated by characters that feel tangibly three-dimensional – Amber, who keeps her heart preserved; Elijah, filled with earth-scorching anger; Zathura, wanting her body to be moved. There’s a really deep sense of empathy in the gentle touch of Alon’s songwriting; ‘I Couldn’t Feed Her’ a heartbroken take on a mother’s feelings of inadequacy caused by an inability to breastfeed. ‘Don’t Fall Asleep’ takes on the bittersweetness of wanting someone to stay awake, to not lose the magic of a moment.
They have a beautiful way with a lyric – the friends who regret sleeping together on ‘Confessions’ ‘drink ourselves naked’ and ‘rip off the label’. On the single ‘Liquid Gold 25’ – named after little bottles of amyl nitrate and the ache of finding hollow connection in meaningless sex – ‘the morning comes like a smoke alarm’. There’s a Lynchian surrealism to ‘pain means more than a flame to a white horse’.
All of this is delivered very gently, these furtive little creases coaxed out into the light in a way that feels intimate, confessional yet not judgemental.
There’s a delicacy, a light touch that feels like a held breath; even little bits of ornamentation like the little electronic arpeggios that tail off ‘Autumn Moon’ or the Elephant 6-y trumpets on ‘Liquid Gold 25’ never feel intrusive.
This will be the introduction for many people to their new favourite artist, the kind of musician who inspires tattoos and epitaphs and obsessive fandom. Who inspires limerence. In Limerence is out now via Island/EMI. Jacob Alon plays The Art School, Glasgow on 5th June.
