BENJAMIN CLEMENTINE – LIVE: REVIEW
BENJAMIN CLEMENTINE
Enmore Theatre, October 22
THE SHOPWORN CLICHÉ “from the sublime to the ridiculous” is more a tired punchline than useful these days, but sometimes you see it in real life, in action, and you must shake your head in wonder and appreciation of its truth.
For the first 50 minutes of this show, his first in Sydney in a career that has already earned a Mercury Prize and a decade of rapturous reviews (and quiet accumulation of a fanbase here not reliant on moribund media for discovery), Benjamin Clementine was mesmerisingly good. Beyond good even.
The curtains parted to reveal him, barefoot and bare-chested under a long, heavy grey coat, large dark sunglasses that would intermittently be shed through the night and shocked hair that had lived a life or three of its own. He was sat at a piano wrapped in white to match the white drop curtains around the stage and soften the angles before us. There was nothing else. There didn’t need anything else.
As he began to unwind the long tale of Nicholas Napolitano, “A mere guest/A transient spirt haunting the purgatory of a mid-tier hotel where the bed linens smelled of bleach”, who lives a full life and yet may remain untouched by its fullness, the simplicity of the presentation remained in contrast to the almost-baroque nature of the storytelling and extravagant length.
“Rain fell with a certain arrogance/As if mocking him for his stillness,” he sang early on, head hunched over the keyboard. “Outside, a child’s laughter pierced the glass/A shrill bright note that made him flinch/’Oh god, let there be stillness’ he muttered”, Clementine punctuating lines with occasional gestures of hands raised in response or supplication. “A man shouldn’t stumble out of the world/He should exit with grace, with punctuation,” he reminded us, body turned outwards briefly, then inwards like a flinch.
This was a grand chanson in the tradition of Leo Ferre and Georges Bressens, the emphasis shifted from melody to narrative, the demands as much actorly as musical, the detail crucial even as the imagery flowered. Later, in Adios, while the piano firmly ascended, Clementine’s phrasing and vocal punctuations framed the impact of “The decision is mine/So let the lesson be mine … The decision is mine/Cause the vision is mine”, a shadow of self-realisation masking ego.
That Clementine is also an actor and poet is never in doubt, and that may be where his real passion lives – in an interview recently, he told me poetry “matters more to me than music” – but his voice is capable of beauty and stunning presence. Falling somewhere between Nina Simone (especially) and a young Scott Walker (in flashes), it captures fall and recovery as easily as passion and uncertainty. And when he unleashes it full force, it can command. You could see it in the way I Won’t Complain, the vocals initially restrained but intense and then carrying us on its back of emotion fighting to be free, restored focus and some degree of intensity to the end of the set. Sublime.
However, that this restoration was necessary brings us to the ridiculous.
Having begun the night with few words, and those spaced widely with the kind of pauses that suggest almost crippling hesitancy in company more than Pinteresque drama, Clementine seemingly had loosened, gained confidence from our responses, as the hour approached. This, it turns out, was unfortunate.
Firstly, in the penultimate song of the set, Condolence, and then again in the encore, he led audience participation in repeating – and repeating and repeating, beyond 20 times – a lyrical and musical hook to the point engagement and amusement turned to tedium and finally irritation. The hoary trope of separating the audience into sections to harmonise foundered not just on the inability of most people to hit the notes he asked for, let alone perform in unison with other parts of the room, but the interminable time taken up with it.
Eventually even the voices of the diehards, like the man sitting next to me whose voice was a loud as it was incapable, began to dribble away. We had begun with Nina and Georges and were veering towards a poor man’s Victor Borge. Arrete!
Thankfully, given how many compelling, and at times outstanding highlights had come in the almost taciturn sparseness of engagement that dominated the show, this foolery should not be the main memory to hold until his return. And surely he will return, as word of mouth spreads the news of his songs and his performance and his brilliance.
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Benjamin Clementine plays Walyalup Fremantle Arts Centre on October 24
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