Benjamin Clementine, Somerset House, gig review: Utterly transfixing

Singer, composer, poet and artist, Benjamin Clementine is an all-too-rare brilliance. Dressed in his trademark black trench coat sans shirt on his back or shoes on his feet, the Mercury Prize-winner’s brooding dramatic force is instantly spellbinding within the imposing beauty of London’s Somerset House.

The 27-year-old Brit, discovered as a homeless busker in Paris, is supported at this sold-out headline gig by an orchestra of strings and cellos that adds gravity to his fearsome vocals and masterful piano-playing. Opener “Winston Churchill’s Boy” silences all murmurings from the packed courtyard, the husky refrain of “home, home, home” on “Cornerstone” shakes with the emotion of heartbreak and “St-Clementine-on-Tea-and-Croissants”, a dazzlingly unhinged weirdo of a song, transforms its singer into something possessed.

Clementine is captivating. “Then I Heard a Bachelor’s Cry”, about the inherent pain in love, channels a barely, yet crucially, anchored rage before “London”, a highlight from debut album At Least For Now, prompts the closest to a sing-a-long heard all night. His virtuoso shifting from quavering falsetto to full-bodied baritone is so magnificent on the frenzied “Adios” that it elicits audible gasps while his command of the gorgeous Steinway grand that dominates the stage is enthralling.

Clementine speaks minimally throughout his 90-minute performance but when he does address the audience, it is to ask them their views on the price of art. It is to bemoan Brexit in mumbles, to reveal his melancholic reason for not voting (“It wouldn’t have made a difference”) and to reply to a fan’s declaration of love with “I hate you” amid awkward laughs from a crowd of music lovers who have perhaps never felt quite so comparatively uncool.

The set reaches its all-consuming climax with “Nemesis”, angry strings and crashing drums whirling up a breathtaking storm of passion and catharsis. Mining the depths of darkness in the stately vein of late Romantic-era composers while lyrically confessing his loneliness in a nod to Sylvia Plath, Clementine takes on an otherworldly majesty, leaving the audience hypnotised by an utterly transfixing talent.