Benjamin Clementine

Benjamin Clémentine
Benjamin Clémentine sitting in a studio Manhattan, New York, USA (2015)
Born	Benjamin Sainte-Clémentine (1988-12-07) 7 December 1988 Crystal Palace, London, Great Britain
Occupation	Poet, singer, pianist, composer, musician
Home town	Edmonton, London, Great Britain
Musical career
Origin	Montmartre, Paris, France
Genres	Baroque pop avant garde minimal art rock rock opera expressionist chamber pop classical folk spoken word
Instruments	Vocals piano keyboard bass drums percussion
Years active	2008–present
Labels	Capitol Virgin EMI Barclay Behind
Associated acts	Charles Aznavour
Website	benjaminclementine.com
Notable instruments
Steingraeber & Söhne E-272 Steinway D-274 Yamaha C7
Signature

Benjamin Sainte-Clémentine (English pronunciation: /ˈbɛndʒəmɪn ˈsən ˈkləməntɪn/; born 7 December 1988)^[1] is a Mercury Prize winning, English artist, poet, composer and a recording musician from London, England.^[2]

He grew up in North London before moving to France for a period of time. At one point a homeless teenager in Paris, his performances helped him to become a cult figure in the music and art scene.^[3] Following his move back to London, he made his TV debut on the BBC programme Later With Jools Holland in 2013.^[4][5] Dubbed as becoming one of the greatest singer-songwriters of his generation,^[6][7][8] most critics have honoured him citing and describing him as a man of unusual intelligence, great piano style and deep musicality with charisma on stage but nonetheless, found it difficult to place his music in one specific genre, mostly stating that its rather beyond category. However, his vocal range, ability and diction has mostly been compared to that of Leonard Cohen, Nina Simone, and his passionate vocal delivery to Edith Piaf.

Clementine's compositions are musically incisive and attuned to the issues of life but also poetic mixing revolt with love and melancholy, sophisticated lyricism with slang and shouts, and rhyming verse with prose monologues. He moved from busking to music-halls, to symphonic music and spoken word, breaking free from traditional song structure, inventing his own dramatic and innovative musical territory. He is noticeably seen playing on stage entirely in black or dark grey long trench-like woollen coat with no shirt underneath, in bare feet.

Despite failing to chart in the UK, his debut album At Least For Now won the 2015 Mercury Prize and fared better across mainland Europe. At the end of 2015 Clementine was included in The Guardian's New Year's honours a list to celebrate heroes of 2015^[9]Debrett's and Britain's London Evening Standard named him one of the most influential people in Britain.^[10][11]

Early life

Clementine was born in Crystal Palace, London,^[12] but grew up in a middle-class family in Edmonton, in the north of the city. He is the last of 5 children. He grew up with his grandmother and after she died, moved in with his parents.^[13][14] Having suffered bullying at school, Clementine was mischievous as a child but his rebellion was rarely conventional. He found himself particularly drawn to the literature of the Bible as well as poetry, especially the works of William Blake, TS Eliot and Carol Ann Duffy. He would bunk off school but spend all day at the library, picking these books at random off the shelves. His older brother Joseph was fond of music philosophy, science and English literature and would point out different types of books and dictionaries for him to read. Clementine sought out rarely used and archaic words, attempting to incorporate them into his vocabulary.^[15][16] Joseph bought a piano when Benjamin was 11 and when Joseph had finished his daily practice, Benjamin would play with it. Eventually his brother's acquired taste for the piano had gone and he moved on to another instrument. Meanwhile, this gave Clementine more time to continue playing. In a few months he started imitating the work of fin-de-siècle composer Erik Satie, learned from hours of listening to Classic FM after "becoming bored" with pop music, and continued to play discreetly for the next 5 years until his parents divorce.^{[2][15][17][18]}

Relocation to Paris

Teenaged Benjamin Clementine singing with a guitar in a subway station in Paris c. 2009

He left school at 16 after failing most of his GCSEs, passing only English literature, following which he had a dispute with his family and ended up in Camden Town, homeless and in psychological and financial difficulties. Although it was not a premeditated plan,^[17] at age 19 he relocated to Paris, France, where he spent a number of years busking and playing in bars and hotels in Place de Clichy sleeping on the streets. Occasionally he applied for jobs cleaning kitchens but was never successful. He eventually moved to a 20 euros hostel in Montmartre, where he lived in a ten men bunk-bed room. He preferred to sleep in the lower beds to enable him to hide his belongings underneath.^[15][19][20] Clementine eventually bought a half-broken guitar and a cheap keyboard. For the next three years he wrote and composed songs. Inspired by the poets and singers he'd come to admire in France, he decided his songs would be pointless if they didn't say something about his particular experiences.^[15] Clementine managed to stay out of trouble as he spent his nights performing and his days composing and writing, becoming a cult figure in the Parisian music scene.^[3] After four years of living as a vagabond, he was discovered by an agent whilst walking back home from an evening performance and they arranged a meeting for the next day. The agent introduced him to a friend, later on becoming Clementine's manager for a period of time. In 2012, whilst playing a gig at the Festival de Cannes they met Lionel Bensemoun, a business mogul in France. Through him, they decided to set up the record label 'Behind' so that Clementine could record his music.^[19][21] He eventually came to the attention of the French press, who described him as "la révélation anglaise des Francos" ("the English revelation of the "Francofolies" festival").^[2] He was then invited to the Rencontres Trans Musicales of Rennes in France in December 2012 where he performed for the first time on a large stage and played four nights consecutively. Clementine eventually signed a joint music license contract between Capitol, Virgin EMI and Barclay.^[18][22]

Difficulties

Before Clementine signed a major deal he closely met and worked with a French tour agent with his independent label in Paris and embarked on a brief European tour playing in high profile festivals as the Montreux Jazz Festival, the Montreal Jazz Festival in Canada; and Eurosonic Festival, of which Rob Van Der Zwaan writing for podium.info described him as one of the highlights.^{[23][24][25][26][27][28]} As a result, the North Sea Jazz Festival in 2013 booked Clementine to play. He failed to attend. According to Clementine, he was kicked off the train en route to Rotterdam for being unable to show a valid ticket. He didn't have enough money due to not getting paid by his then-tour agent. Clementine later stated that he had attempted to travel by foot to Rotterdam, after assuming the city was close by. However, the journey was in fact 45 km, which was considerably longer than he had estimated. He had tried to stop passers by while walking along the motorway, but nobody would stop and help. It took him about 10 hours to complete the journey and he arrived at his destination with bleeding toes. When he set off walking he was wearing slippers, but at some point decided to carry on walking barefoot.^[29][30] Despite this, two years later he was offered another spot at the same festival.^[31][32][33] In 2014, during the shooting of his music video for "At Least for Now", Clementine fell on a pile of stones in Ireland, badly injuring his elbow, then later cut a toe whilst walking on stones. In March 2015, whilst performing in the middle of a concert in Paris, he cut a finger open and started to bleed, but kept on playing until an audience member threw tissues on the stage. He later cynically remarked: thats what happens when you fall in love; you get hurt.^[3]

Early recordings

Cornerstone EP, Glorious You EP

Photo of Benjamin Clementine and Sir Paul McCartney taken backstage at BBC Later with Jools Holland

Clementine's first EP, Cornerstone, was released in June 2013 with three studio tracks.^[12] It was re-issued in October 2013 with three additional acoustic tracks recorded for Deezer, a web-based music streaming service.^[21] In the same month, on an episode of the BBC television show Later With Jools Holland that also included performances by Paul McCartney, Earth, Wind and Fire, Gary Clark, Jr. and the Arctic Monkeys,^[34] he performed the EP’s title track.^[19][35] The appearance drew strong critical praise, with Paul McCartney encouraging Clementine to continue his musical career.^[2] The London Evening Standard's David Smyth, reviewing a gig at the South Bank Centre, said that Clementine's performance reminded him of Nina Simone, particularly as he had covered her hit "Ain't Got No, I Got Life" in a radically different style.^[36] Clementine announced further tours, both solo and supporting Cat Power at the Brighton Dome, including an appearance at the O2 Academy in Brixton^[37] and at the Rencontres Trans Musicales festival in Rennes, France, where he worked on a special show and performed four nights.^[35] Andy Gill on the Independent album review wrote:

This debut EP offers a taste of one of 2014's most promising new talents. With just Benjamin Clementine’s impulsive piano figures accompanying his dark, powerful voice, there's a soulful solemnity about these searching songs. But there’s also a wealth of imagination at work: "It's a wonderful life, traversed in tears from the heavens," he observes in "I Won't Complain", surveying the emotional turmoil that renders his heart a "melodrama in fact"; while over flurries of piano, his urgent delivery of "Cornerstone" blends the sensitivity of Antony Hegarty with the wracked passion of Nina Simone, admitting loneliness as his "home, home, home", but biting off the word to sound like "hope". A distinctive and impressive new voice.^[38]

Studio albums

At Least for Now

Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	75/100
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[39]
The Observer	[40]
The Independent	[41]
The Wall Street Journal	[42]
The National	[43]
PopMatters	7/10[44]
Q
The Guardian	[45]

Clementine initially wanted to record his debut album, At Least for Now straight after his first EP, Cornerstone, but due to contractual dealings with the music industry and his label it was strategically held back for almost two years. During that time he decided to write his own dictionary, as well as a collection of poetry^[46] and classical music pieces. At Least for Now was mainly released across Europe on January 12, 2015.^[16] On the 13 February 2015 it reached the iTunes Top 10 in Italy, Holland, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg Poland and Greece. In France, it went number 1, has been certified Gold and has won a prestigious Victoires de la Musique (the French equivalent of the Grammys) award for best new artist.^[14][47]

At Least for Now largely received critical acclaim. The album holds a 75 out of 100 rating based on 19 critical reviews indicating "generally positive reviews" from Metacritic. Clementine win of the Mercury Prize came as a complete surprise by many and was perfectly written by Geoffery Himes in the Washington Post by saying that It was impressive enough that Benjamin Clementine won 2015’s Mercury Prize, It’s even more impressive that “At Least for Now” is unlike anything else in pop music at the moment. The best shorthand description is perhaps “Nina Simone singing the Leonard Cohen songbook,” for Clementine’s unapologetically literary lyrics are delivered in a strong but idiosyncratic tenor. David Simpson from The Guardian gave the album 3 stars out of 5, describing the debut as "fascinating but flawed", explaining that it "benefits from the bravery and adventurousness Clementine honed while tackling audiences aboard Parisian trains." Regarding Clementine's vocals, Simpson said: "Channelling influences such as Erik Satie and Antony Hegarty, Clementine is reminiscent of Kevin Rowland in that he sounds as if he is singing from the gut, and because he has to. If only he had Rowlands’ economy: mannered vocal flourishes complicate the melodies when what’s needed is simplicity. The addition of syrupy strings and pedestrian drumming further dilutes the impact of his raw talent. However, when he performs unadorned, melodies dripping from his fingertips, and letting fly from the heart, his voice is difficult to forget."^[48] Phil Mongredien, also reviewing for The Guardian, gave the album 4 stars out of 5, writing that "for the most part these piano-led songs sound unique, the lonely despair of Cornerstone and the arresting lyricism of Condolence signalling an exciting new talent."^[49]

Artistry

Voice

Clementine is a spinto tenor.^[14] His voice has been described as warm and graceful, with a bright, full timbre, that ranges from approximately the C one octave below middle C (C3) to the D one octave above middle C (D5). Writing for The Quietus, Calum Bradbury-Sparvell described Clementine's voice as having the "expressive but exact enunciation of a stage actor, which allows his lyrics to spill and scatter out of sync with his hands in a way which warrants the endless Nina Simone comparisons." He went on to write: "Yet as an atypical singer-songwriter with a strong sense of grandeur, an impressively broad tenor range and more than a dash of dark humour, he also resembles Rufus Wainwright".^[50] Interviewing Clementine for The New York Times, David Byrne said,

It seemed to me that Clementine’s autodidacticism was his way of asking how one should be in a world that doesn’t make sense — the type of inquisitive probing we get in his soulful songs, which draw on the work of French performers such as Léo Ferré, Édith Piaf and Henri Salvador. His stirring, impassioned tenor sounds like it’s from another world, but it’s the singer’s questioning of the one we live in that sets his music apart.^[51]

Instruments

Clementine is a multi instrumentalist and cites a broad range of musical influences: Claude Debussy, Erik Satie, Leonard Cohen, Leo Ferré, Nina Simone, Jake Thackray, Jimi Hendrix, Serge Gainsbourg, Aretha Franklin, Lucio Dalla, Giacomo Puccini, Luciano Pavarotti, Maria Callas, George Brassens and Frédéric Chopin. In a 2015 interview he listed Simone, Nick Cave and Tom Waits as his heroes.^[52] Clementine had little exposure to music whilst growing up and is self-taught. In his teens he had caught Anthony Hegarty performing "Hope There's Someone" on television; then on the radio he'd heard avant-garde French composers like Erik Satie. These influences inspired him to create own material. He accompanies on hypnotic piano vamps^[53] with mostly minimal instruments ranging from little voice breaths, a brushing of coat for percussion as in his song "Edmonton", to a vicious string stride confrontation in his song "Adios".^[54]

He said:

I am an expressionist; I sing what I say, I say what I feel and i feel what I play by honesty and none other but honesty. Some will get bored of me, but I invite the patient listener to come forth, feel and most importantly engage with me without asking too many questions. Hopefully by the end of listening they shall get answers not questionable, whether pleasing or not.^[55]

Poetry

Portrait of Benjamin Clementine c. 2011

Clementine states he has mainly been influenced by confessional poets like Sylvia Plath as well as writers such as William Blake, Carol Ann Duffy, James Baldwin, the philosopher John Locke and C. S. Lewis. In an interview with the broadsheet newspaper The Times with Ed Potton, Clementine expressed his feelings of hating the works of William Shakespeare as a child as it was all his teachers always taught him so he preferably went to his local library to read the other William, William Blake.^[56] Whilst in Paris, he discovered French poets such as Guillaume Apollinaire, Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud including poet-singers such as Leo Ferré, George Brassens, Jacques Brel and Charles Aznavour with whom he sang and recorded the song 'You've got to learn'.^[57][58] It is Paris where Clementine discovered Nina Simone. He delivers his introspective lyrics about integrity and vulnerability and explores both in everyday experience. One of his frustrations after returning to the UK was how little ambition he thinks there is in British song lyrics compared to his experience of French music. Talking to the Guardian journalist Tim Lewis, he said, "it's very important down there (France) because most of the time they [the audience] pay more attention to what the singer says and what they are trying to express."^[54]

On his song Winston Churchill`s boy, he rewrites and repurposes the words of Winston Churchill, lamenting "never in the field of human affection had so much been given for so few attention". Writing for The Quietus, Calum Bradbury-Sparvell described the song in the context of Clementine's debut album as "a melodramatic beginning which harks back to the alienation he felt from family and friends on the eve of his emigration to the City Of Light," going on to write: "For a Gallic darling, Clementine certainly gazes wistfully across La Manche a lot and one senses that, despite the obvious French influences, there is more of the spurned Londoner in him than the flâneur.^[50]

Image

Mostly playing on stage entirely in black or dark long trench-like woollen coats with no shirt underneath, in barefoot, Clementine's distinctive androgynous appearance, square-cut, angular padded clothing, manner, and height of 193 cm (6'4) is uniquely known at least as much as he is for his art. In March 2015 Clementine was listed as one of the fifty best-dressed by the Financial Times.^[59] Clementine collaborated multiple times with Christopher Bailey. On 17 June 2014 Clementine performed three songs live throughout the Burberry Prorsum Menswear Catwalk show^[60][61] - the first musician to perform live throughout a Burberry show. He performed again on the Burberry menswear show in January 2016.^[62] In April 2016, his song "I Won't Complain" was chosen for the Mr. Burberry ad, directed by Oscar-winning director Steve McQueen.^[63]

Performance and appearances

Benjamin Clementine at the Great American Music Hall, San Francisco

Clementine's live performances have received praise.^[64]David Byrne interviewing Clementine for The New York Times Magazine accounted on his performances saying that he was introduced to Clementine’s music through a friend who insisted he check him out. He was floored, and immediately asked him to perform at a music festival that he curated in London. He took the stage in a long coat, no shirt or shoes on, and played the piano perched on a high stool, almost standing. He said that It was as if Clementine were singing directly to each person in that room, a far cry from rush hour in a station of the Métro.^[51] Mollie Goodfellow of The Independent upon reviewing him at the Meltdown festival curated by David Byrne in the Queen Elizabeth Hall August (2015), stated;

Despite repeat comparisons to Nina Simone from critics, it’s hard to pin London-born, Paris-dwelling Benjamin Clementine down. His voice certainly has the richness of Simone, but his style of performing and theatrical flair is entirely his own. His song Adios, from album At Least For Now, for example, would not be out of place on Broadway. He carries himself well, walking on stage confidently and barefoot, and carries his music even better – each song sung so strikingly that you can’t help but get caught up in the emotion of the thing. I’ll admit I found myself affected by his rendition of his popular single Cornerstone, a song reminiscent of the Cinematic Orchestra. Really, he needs no more than himself and a piano, but Clementine’s drummer Alexi joins him on stage for several of his songs at the Meltdown Festival set. The drumming complimented the flatness of the piano perfectly. Every word, every key of his set was performed with an incredible certainty and purpose and the moments of silence found between verses were fraught with a heavy tension, like the audience were waiting for a sudden outburst of emotion – which is something the performance was not exactly lacking in the first place.^[65]

However, John Lawrence from The Daily Telegraph despite giving Clementine a four star review at his gig at the Barbican also remarked that during the evening, Clementine attempted two covers and it was here that his charismatic singularity dwindled. An over-worked Voodoo Chile and a pretty but unremarkable version of Nick Drake`s Riverman confirmed that Clementine is at his best when he is mining the depths of his own strange world. Despite vocal swoops and bursts of grand guignol piano playing, Clementine’s own songs always felt intimate and confessional. Using someone else’s words was deadening somehow. However, anyone attending last night’s concert would have realised that Clementine has talent to burn. He is only 26 and yet, already, he has mastered a key theme that is essential to so many great artists – that of life’s essential sadness.^[66]

On 17 July 2014, Clementine performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival.^[12][67]

An album was scheduled to be released in 2014,^[68] but Clementine announced that he will be releasing his second EP called Glorious You, on 25 August 2014.^[1]

On Sunday 12 October 2014, Clementine performed and spoke at the Observer Ideas at the Barbican Centre, a festival to share ideas to the public, in a line up that included Edward Snowden, David Simon, creator of the acclaimed HBO series The Wire and multi-award winning musician Tinie Tempah^[69]

Benjamin Clementine was nominated for the 2015 Mercury Prize and subsequently won. He dedicated his award to the memory of the victims of the terrorist attacks in Paris the previous week.^[70]

On 12 February 2016, Benjamin Clementine announced a new tour in Europe and the United States.^[71][72][73]

Discography

Albums

EPs

Singles

Television appearances

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Benjamin Clementine.

• Benjamin Clementine discography at Discogs
• Benjamin Clementine - Cornerstone - Later... with Jools Holland - BBC Two HD on YouTube
• Benjamin Clementine - Live Deezer Session (Cornerstone) on YouTube