Outside the Barrowland Ballroom, doused in spring sunshine, seasoned pop singer Olly Alexander is greeting an excited coterie of fans. Inside, his tour support act Jacob Alon is emitting the gentler but unmistakeable glow of Scotland’s newest music star, as they ponder astrophysical concepts in the cool murk of the venue’s Revue bar. ‘The brightest things in our universe are made under immense forces of attraction,’ says Alon. ‘Quasars, stars, supernovas: all these things come from pulling things together. I think of love and compassion; those are the most powerful forces of this universe. Although it seems dark right now, hate cannot win because we are social creatures of attraction in our nature. Hate is a force of division, and in division we are weaker. But the force of love is a force of attraction.’

Phew. And I was only wrapping up the interview by asking if there was anything else Alon would like List readers to know. But there speaks a former student of theoretical physics as much as a thoughtful poet. Alon was a maths kid at school but it sounds like they have found their calling in the other universal language of music.

This eloquent, sensitive, scintillating singer-songwriter first beamed into our living rooms last autumn with a spellbinding slot on Later . . . With Jools Holland, arriving seemingly fully formed as an assured troubadour with natural charisma, puckish style and a fragile voice for heartbreak which reeled in the room and left audiences craving more. More of that is on the way when Alon releases debut album In Limerence, a truly gorgeous suite of acoustic songs about reality and fantasy, confinement and escape, science and fiction, altered states and being crazy in love. The record is so captivating that Alon might have to prepare for going supernova themselves.

‘I’d be lying if I said I’ve enjoyed it all,’ says Alon of the accelerated journey so far. ‘I’m trying to figure out where my heart lies within doing this. It’s easy to feel daunted at the start because it’s a lot at once. There’s so much to be grateful for but there are days when I’ve wondered “am I built for this?”’

Alon was brought up in Dunfermline in an environment where playing music was not much considered nor encouraged, but grew up on their mum’s favourite female singers, Lauryn Hill and Alison Moyet, and effortless tenor voices such as Stevie Wonder and Chris Martin which were to inform their own bewitching, feminine tones. Eventually. ‘I found music in the small cracks between the couch and the places where I wasn’t meant to look,’ they say, with typical off-the-cuff lyricism. ‘It always felt like something naughty or something I was getting away with; that’s why I never pursued a career in music. The idea of it seems like an oxymoron to me, this unachievable thing that I shouldn’t think myself worthy of, so I pushed it away for a long time.’

Alon knew there was something there. Hearing a classmate play Beethoven on the piano ignited a spark which appealed to both the methodical mathematician and the dormant artist. Their mum taught them to pick out a tune on a ‘wonky’ piano at home and from there, Alon turned to the universal tutor that is YouTube for piano, guitar and singing practice. ‘I would sit in my room at night where I had this little digital keyboard, click-clacking away, pissing off my step-dad,’ they say. ‘I just felt all these feelings that I didn’t know I had and I would push into them more.’

Meanwhile, Alon attempted to parlay their desire to help people and meet family expectations by studying medicine. When that didn’t work out, they jumped to theoretical physics, with music gnawing away in the background as the love that dare not speak its name. ‘I was truly so miserable; I couldn’t see myself going on without trying to be something I wasn’t,’ they say. ‘It sounds dramatic but it was a dramatic time, with covid and stuff, so it led to big thoughts about my own identity. Understanding who I am through my queerness is this ever-evolving process that happens in layers. It’s not this one big coat you take off and you show the world “hello, this is me, I’m coming out, end of story”. We’re always coming out, we’re always coming to terms with who we are and what we love and how we live.’

Alon found community in the unlikely environment of Edinburgh’s tiny Captain’s Bar, one of the city’s intimate destinations for live folk music. ‘I came across this circle of wacky characters sitting outside the pub, all spread two metres apart, passing round a sanitised guitar.’ Alon played an original song ‘and it opened this whole other world’. They moved to London for a few months, lived in a van, worked in hospitality and failed to find fortune. It was only on returning to Scotland and meeting their manager Hamish Fingland (ex-Kassidy) that things started to fall into place. Ears pricked up, doors opened, shit got serious.

‘For a long part of my life I couldn’t take myself seriously because I didn’t feel like a very serious person,’ says Alon. ‘When I was a teenager I would write songs to make my friends laugh and take the piss out of the world and myself and other people. I was always a messer and getting into trouble but I was always taught from a very young age “don’t be silly”. You are not allowed to be an outlier, because if you don’t take it seriously then you are not productive. But now it feels like it’s got too serious sometimes. I think we would all do a lot better if we were a bit more playful and silly.’

There is surely playfulness in Alon gadding about like a woodland sprite in photo shoots or naming a song about the trials of Grindr hook-ups after a brand of poppers (‘Liquid Gold 25’). But there is also no doubt that their music is set to be taken very seriously, with (justified) superlatives and Nick Drake/Jeff Buckley comparisons already flying about ahead of the album release.

In Limerence is named after an emotional state akin to unrequited love, and the album rages quietly with the madness of romantic infatuation. ‘I say it as directly as I can in the song “Fairy In A Bottle”’, says Alon of the debut single which made everyone sit up and take note. ‘It’s like you trap them in this prison of an idea and you’re always thinking about them. In a way you’re mourning them because they’ve never existed.’

Another track, ‘Of Amber’, alludes to the entrapment/protection of ancient matter in an amber inclusion, while closing song ‘Sertraline’ is an ambivalent hymn to anti-depressants. ‘I think the attachment style of limerence comes from trying to protect yourself from being rejected for who you really are, but in doing so you protect yourself from real love because something that’s not real can’t love you back. When I’ve been in these limerence spells, in deep despair, Sertraline has come to me as this spindly little hand that does pull me out of it but it comes with a lot of its own problems.’

Later that night, Alon brings a stillness, grace, vulnerability and beauty to the Barrowlands stage. Sure, there is bar chatter up the back but also plenty of rapt attention for a singer still reckoning with their place in the musical universe. ‘I’ve been reflecting on what I want because it’s not to be really popular and make lots of money and get lots of attention. I don’t like it when a lot of eyes are on me. Music saved my life and I would like to just propagate art in some way. The thing that’s driving me now is I want to keep fighting all these ugly things that are happening in this really dark turn back to fascism. I want to have a voice in that and stand up, be a badass. I think that’s what I want to say.’ Spoken like a true star.

In Limerence is released by Island/EMI on Friday 30 May; Jacob Alon is touring the UK until Thursday 5 June.