Benjamin Clementine - I Tell a Fly

The Guardian 60

The Mercury-winner has swerved the mainstream and made an avant garde concept album about Aleppo, the refugee crisis and two flies in love

Earlier this year, Benjamin Clementine told the Observer about the difficult process of submitting his second album to his record label. Things became so fraught, he said, that he threatened to return from whence he came: the Paris Metro, where he was discovered as a homeless busker. “I said to them: ‘Listen, if you want me to do what you want, then I’ll go back to just playing and sleeping rough.’”

Indeed, should the fainthearted listener require a moment of respite during I Tell a Fly’s more harrowing passages, a certain light relief can be had simply by imagining his label’s reaction when the 28-year-old singer-songwriter revealed that the follow-up to his 2015 Mercury prize-winning debut At Least For Now was a concept album about two flies in love set against a backdrop of geopolitical strife – most notably the ongoing refugee crisis and ensuing political fallout. It’s easy to picture the disconsolate expression on the faces of anyone who thought Clementine had a chance of snaring the lucrative Radio 2 market, if only he could be convinced to rein in some of his outre musical leanings – maybe abandon the theatrical penchant for putting on different accents as he sings, lose the rococo classical influences and make the songs a touch more linear and straightforward. Opening track Farewell Sonata begins with a doomy, echo-drenched a capella chorus that shifts from speaker to speaker, is replaced by a piano instrumental influenced by late 19th-century impressionist music, which in turn gives way to discordant synthesiser, a burst of fragmented rock decorated with highly mannered vocals, glitching noise, then more Ravel-esque piano to fade. It’s a piece of music that seems to say: “Best of luck getting this on the Ken Bruce show, mate.”

Related: Benjamin Clementine: ‘I make people believe in me’