The Welsh singer-songwriter speaks to Olivia Petter about turning heartbreak into a career, the future of the music industry, and not being as melancholic as his fans may expect.

When Ali Lacey was 20 years old, he had his heart broken. “As clichéd as it sounds, I wrote love songs about the whole situation,” he recalls. “You’re in those formative years when everything just feels more emotionally charged. But looking back, I kind of cringe about the way I acted.” He grimaces. “I was writing the songs as soon as things happened and then I would send them to her. Argh, I wish I didn’t. The lyrics are just so obvious. It’s nice to see that I’ve grown.”

He has. Today, performing as Novo Amor, the 29-year-old Welshman has a cult following as an indie folk artist whose songs combine swelling melodies, a supple falsetto, and tender lyrics about love and loss. “And I hear your ship is comin’ in/ Your tears a sea for me to swim,” he sings plaintively on “Anchor”.

As for the name, it means “New Love” in Portuguese. The pseudonym helps him separate his melancholic music self from his actual self. “When I started releasing songs as Novo Amor, my friends were all like, ‘Are you alright, mate?’ I’m a very happy person, really,” he says. “And while I really fell in love with this type of music, it just didn’t feel like me. It felt like this side of me that had been brought out by the break-up. I also just thought that my name wasn’t that nice.”

We are speaking over Zoom, of course, but Lacey’s sunny disposition still comes across on screen. He's polite, and as interested in my life as I am his – certainly not the Eeyore his songs might make him out to be. When I ask if he ever feels pressured to be controversial, he says, “It’s genre dependent. You get someone like Cardi B or other rappers kicking off about something and it works. It’s attitude, innit. Attitude doesn’t need to be present in alternative folk music.” He’s self-deprecating, too, when we speak about social media. “I don’t want to be someone who posts pictures of their food. But then I also don’t want to be like, ‘Oh I’m so melancholic and my music’s so deep, it means so much to me.’”

Lacey’s graceful debut album, Birthplace – which was inspired by that break-up, as well as his love of upstate New York, where he worked briefly as a music teacher – was praised by critics when it came out in 2018, setting him off on a world tour that boosted his career but left him missing home. It wasn’t until the winter of 2019 that he started working on his second album, Cannot Be, Whatsoever, which is out on Friday 6 November.