Benjamin Clementine reins in his flair on And I Have Been — album review

“I won’t underestimate who I am capable of becoming,” Benjamin Clementine announced in his debut album At Least for Now. The line came in a song about a Londoner who moves to Paris, as Clementine had as a penniless teenager. His singing was dramatic and powerful, vaulting notes at will, while the music was also a thing of leaps and bounds, one moment jittering along to a jazzy drumbeat, the next swirling into grand orchestral pop. Clementine was not to be underestimated: his debut won the 2015 Mercury music prize.

I Tell a Fly followed in 2017, a work of cabaret surrealism themed around concepts of displacement and alienation. Clementine’s flavoursome style, verging on gaminess, had been honed by the period of time he spent living in France, home of theatrical chansonniers and ornate lyricism. But then he fell uncharacteristically quiet. It has taken five years for his third album to appear.

“Fire in my Nubian eyes” are the arresting words of And I Have Been, uttered as though the singer were fixing us with a proudly glittering stare. But the album does not match the elevated level of his previous work. Opener “Residue” has an attractive chamber-pop tune that is capsized by a force-10 bellowed refrain. “Gypsy, BC” broaches a common theme in Clementine’s music, the outsider “forever thriving in spaces we’re not supposed to be”, but the song’s fitfully flamboyant progression is truncated after two minutes. A number of other songs have short durations as well.

The album is less extravagant musically than its predecessors, with sober but nondescript piano and string arrangements dominating, especially in the latter stages. And while Clementine could never be considered a restrained singer, he is less expressive too, as though reining in his flair. On this occasion, he has underestimated his capabilities.

★★☆☆☆

‘And I Have Been’ is released by Preserve Artists