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Joesef is a young soul with an old soul who’s mastered new soul.

Since shining through on the BBC’s Sound of 2020 poll only nine months after his first ever gig, the Scottish singer-songwriter has released a brace of #fire singles and EPs, broke his pandemic-induced gigging furlough with a magical woodland performance at last summer’s Latitude, toured with his band and Mercury Prize winner (and long-term supporter) Arlo Parks, and performed a sold-out Friday night at Barrowlands.

“That was just fucking mad!” he marvels of his rapturous homecoming. “The whole gig I was like, what the hell is going on? It was just so loud. It was a Glasgow crowd, so I expected that, but it was mental – I couldn’t even hear myself, especially during Comedown – a quiet song that people sing the loudest – and The Sun Is Up Forever. And I got to take my mum backstage, so that was special. Playing shows and live music are the most important thing to me. Other things in life come and go, but you can always remember an amazing show – and that was the most amazing yet.”

From one high to another: now Glasgow’s golden boy with the golden pipes is preparing for an even more stellar 2022. Having relocated to London at the end of 2020 ­– fleeing lockdown #2, an ex- and the memories – Joesef was intent on “expanding my horizons”, musically and emotionally. So he's spent most of last year hunkered and bunkered in The Dairy in Brixton, working on his debut album with producer Barney Lister (Joy Crookes, Celeste), writing and writing and writing.

His debut album is almost done – he thinks one more tune should do it – while his new musical base has also come with an unexpected bonus: a friendship with fellow Dairy resident, Guy Garvey of Elbow.

“His lyrics are just incredible. It’s pure working class torch songs. I love that shit. I live and breathe for a good lyric – like, I love Phoebe Bridger’s way with a specific image or idea, and how that then becomes universal because it’s so honest.”

Up until then, Joesef had done everything himself. As a teenager, the lad from Glasgow’s East End knew no one in the music industry. He had only one quick year on a music production course under his belt (“I just couldn’t deal with the wires and shit like that – although I did learn how to use Ableton”). Equally, while his was a childhood surrounded by his mum’s favourite records being blasted out morning, noon and night (Al Green, The Mamas and the Papas, Marvin Gaye, Donny Hathaway), there was no money for music lessons.

As much is evident in Joesef’s next single, the upbeat, four-to-the-floor Eighties club-meets-21st century emotionality and textures of It’s Been a Little Heavy Lately. Just as Joesef’s voice reaches new heights on the musical scale, so does his lyrical precision.

So it goes for the song already pegged as the single after that, Moment. Possibly his poppiest, well, moment yet, as he accurately describes it, the track is “a ripper. It’s banging, man, very fast and driving. I went back to Glasgow and saw my ex- and we ended up sleeping together. But something had changed. The feeling wasn’t there anymore. So it’s about wishing we could go back to the way it was, just for a wee moment.”

Writing with such full-force candour: does Joesef ever feel he’s giving too much of himself away. He shakes his head.

“My motto is: what else am I going to do?”

He means that in the sense of: “Am I going to be aimless for the rest of my life? No.” But also in the sense of: that’s the only way he knows how to write.

“At the end of the day, I’m completely in control of everything I do. It’s always been that way, and it will always be that way. I’m proud of that. And I’m proud of where I come from. That’s definitely impacted how I work. That can be quite limiting sometimes, coming from the East End of Glasgow. Even singing at all wouldn’t necessarily be expected, far less singing about having a boyfriend.”

For Joesef it is, in every sense, all to play for. “I’m pretty caked for the coming year,” he concludes, beaming. “I’m geared up, ready to go and poised for the action. Me and the band are just buzzing to get out there.”