You couldn’t make this guy up. A pianist from age 11, he grew up in a strict Ghanaian Christian household in deepest north London, had his teenage world turned upside down when he saw New York indie-alternative torch act Antony & the Johnsons in a rare peek at TV, ran away to become homeless in Paris, busking for a living, then slowly made a name for himself. This biography is dealt with in the serialist piano stomp of “Adios”, before the song blooms into an Ennio Morricone-meets-Philip Glass escapade.
Now 26 and striking looking, with a notably chiselled jaw and a giant pompadour haircut, Clementine is creating waves around Europe with this debut album. It’s an exceptional musical outing that contains strong elements of Nina Simone and the aforementioned Antony Hegarty, alongside the wilful songwriting of Tom Waits, yet it’s entirely defined by its creator’s unique vision.
I can see how the occasionally preposterous, mannered singing style might grate. A good example is the way he extends the word “alone” – to a melodramatic, quavering “aloooon” – on his best known song, “Cornerstone”, the number he performed on Later with Jools Holland back in 2013. However, whether you buy into it or not, there’s no denying that At Least for Now is different from anything else happening in popular music.
Opening with “Winston Churchill’s Boy”, which starts with a cheeky paraphrasing of the war prime minister’s famous Battle of Britain speech, an initial reservation is that Clementine’s unlikely theatrics won’t sustain a whole album. 11 songs later such thoughts are long gone. Whether mustering cinematic sweep akin to Hozier’s “Take Me to Church”, indulging in the abstract James Blake-ian oddness of “St Clementine on Tea and Crossants”, or simply offering contagious, string-swathed alt-pop on “London” or “Nemesis”, he’s never less than fascinating, even when he runs headlong at burlesque campery on the magnificently outré “Quiver a Little”.
Benjamin Clementine’s debut is ravishing, unafraid to be itself as its maker wanders round jazz, pop, singer-songwriter fare, beatnik weirdness and anything else he fancies, leaving genre strictures for the also-rans. In doing so he may have created 2015’s most striking and bewitching album.
Overleaf: Watch the video for "Nemesis"
