THE air around Joesef must buzz with electricity. The singularly-named young Glasgow singer is currently feeling it too. Down in London with his manager, he’s taking a break in between meetings with PR people and industry bods.

These two Summer Nights gigs at King Tuts have long sold-out, meaning Joesef has managed to shift 600 tickets on the strength of two tracks: debut single Limbo and recent track Loverboy.

And what tracks. Displaying a vocal style as unique as the instrumentation, these are highly soulful cuts quite unlike anything else around.

These gigs are not the first time Joesef has sold out the legendary Glasgow venue: in March he played to a full house, despite not having posted music on the likes of Spotify, where he currently has around 230,000 global listeners.

The only artist to have pulled off the same trick is Lewis Capaldi.

If the career trajectory of the Bathgate star is an indication, these dates could be the last time fans can see Joesef in a venue as intimate as his songs.

“When I did the first gig in March, I had to ask around my pals to help sell the tickets,” he says. “Apart from a few tiny Instagram clips, there was nothing online. It was maybe people wanting to see if it would be bad, but it turned out OK.”

He adds: “There’s a lot happening and it’s hard to keep track of it all and it’s a bit weird but exciting. Like my manager, who’s just started their own management company, I’m new to all this and just beginning to get acclimatised to it.”

It was Joesef’s manager who encouraged him to write after hearing him sing a version of California Dreamin’ at an open mic night.

Joesef, then a sound engineering student, had never seen himself as a musician.

“I’ve never even been in a band before,” he says. “I grew up in Easterhouse and all my mates are plumbers and joiners. I had never thought I would be making music. I had sang a bit, but never at college – I was always too nervous. But my manager was like: ‘You need to do this’.”

I thought: ‘I’m not doing anything else so I may as well try’.”

Joesef’s musical education came from his mother, a music fan who filled the family home with the sounds of Al Green, Carole King, The Mamas and The Papas and The Cure.

That classic songwriting is in evidence in Limbo and Loverboy, heart-wrenching songs which ally balmy soul, hip hop rhythms and dreamy production to lyrics written in the aftermath of a break-up.

If they sound like emanations from another world, that’s down to Joesef doing things his own way.

Though a four-piece band will back him on these dates, he writes, plays and produces his material alone.

His voice has been widely compared with Amy Winehouse, but there’s also the expressiveness of Corinne Bailey-Rae and the fragile beauty of Chet Baker.

The lyrics are startlingly raw and reflective, demonstrating what we now might call emotional intelligence. In another era, it was called soul.

Joesef was recently pictured next to huge billboards in Glasgow and Manchester displaying fragments of lyrics from new single Don’t Give In.

An EP will follow in the coming months with an album sometime next year.

“It’s hilarious seeing lyrics I wrote at home, crying in my pants, on a billboard,” he says.

“I can only write about things that have happened to me. My favourite singers have always been the honest ones, people like James Taylor and Carole King.

“In Glasgow, people can smell the bullshit. They know if you’re lying or pretending. You don’t get away with it.”