At Least For Now - Benjamin Clementine

Track list:

1. Winston Churchill's Boy
2. Then I Heard A Bachelor's Cry
3. London
4. Adios
5. St-Clementine-On-Tea-And-Croissants
6. Nemesis
7. The People And I
8. Condolence
9. Cornerstone
10. Quiver A Little
11. Gone

Running time: 50 minutes
Released: 2015

So as is traditional for me at this time of year, I have perused the list of Mercury nominated artists and picked up the ones that interest me. Including, this year, the winner. I am already certain that I won't want all of this from the samples I have heard, and if I had the patience to listen via streaming services before committing then, well... I wouldn't be here doing this now, would I?

I was interested not because it won, but because I saw it described with an emphasis on the piano melodies. On the evidence of the opening track (some horribly mangled English in the opening lyrics that reference Churchill's famous speech about the Battle of Britain aside) there could well be something to back up that initial interest. However this listen is going to be a challenge - I am battling not just the habitual tiredness that I can never escape (even after 12 hours in bed!) , but also a hangnail or something that means that it hurts whenever I use the little finger of my left hand. As that happens a fair bit when typing (a!) this could be a painful stretch.

First impressions are mixed. The language mess-up on the one hand balanced by a nice melody on the other. By the time the second track is well underway I am pretty sure I don't much like Clementine's voice, though I see some traces of Nina Simone in his vocal approach and appreciate the way his words are shaped, the actual sounds produced leave me a little cold. The structure of the tunes though... that is very likable, particularly the more upbeat opening to London. This song finds me less alienated by his singing voice too. Now the disc won the Mercury prize, I half expect this tune to crop up everywhere as backing music to adds, TV trails etc. It has that kind of universal appeal - the same sort of draw as To Build a Home by The Cinematic Orchestra, which also ended up everywhere after Ma Fleur was released.

Adios is a clear step down for my money - the move to a staccato style of playing makes for a far less engaging melody and it is really only the melodies that I am interested in here. This track redeems itself with a second half a world away from the first, and crams 3 movements into 4 minutes, an interesting contrast to the sameness of some things I have listened to recently. I haven't heard much more random than the 1 minute long insert with hyphens that is St-Clementine-On-Tea-And-Croissants; it just seems completely out of place and adds nothing. There is no tune, just a strained voice and a lyric that leaves much to be desired.

Thankfully it does seem to be a random insert because the next track is back to a pleasant melody. Like most so far it is piano-led with strong backing from strings and percussion, and here Clementine manages to make his voice fit well to the point that it no longer grates on me. Rather than the piano, this track is made by the string arrangement, the keyboard providing bass structure as much as anything else. The tracks seem longer than they are - not because they are dragging (as has been the case on some prior listens) but because they achieve the change ups and movements. My head has gone. It happened about the same time yesterday evening too - I just simply crashed and started feeling ready for bed very early in the evening. Yesterday I had an excuse of being busy with people all day, today I've done very little but recover and yet it still hits me. I am afraid that makes this listen largely void - I can barely concentrate all of a sudden.

The opening of Condolence is pretty special, high tempo but low key. The roll of the track continues after the vocal starts but it loses some of its hypnotic magic. Still a fine track though, my favourite so far. I find myself with little to say - tiredness, no doubt. I am very much on the fence about some of what I am hearing. Not all of the tracks have managed the different movements or got the balance between melody and structure, or allied well with what is not the most natural singing voice I have ever heard. I think I am going to have to listen again sometime soon, in a different mood, at a different time of day (of year? Winter gets to me so...) before rushing to judgement. However there is no way this would have been my British album of the year, though I have not bought that much this year it seems, my favourite release from 2015 has been Bashed Out; I called it as a potential album of the year when I picked it up months ago, and for me This is the Kit has not been topped. I find myself surprised that At Least for Now actually won the Mercury Prize, but also happy that something like this could win.

I feel that if his voice were a touch more musical then this could have been a lot more approachable. Getting past the rough edges and distinctive accent is causing me some issues, keeping me at a distance. I am happy to report that I didn't get turned off by anything in a big way, which I expected to from the track previews I had heard, except for the crazy out-of-place interlude. Wow, that is a lot of waffle for nothing really. More digression than discussion. Long story short I need to give Benjamin Clementine another chance.

Blue Roses - Blue Roses

Track list:

1. Greatest Thoughts
2. Cover Your Tracks
3. I Am Leaving
4. Can't Sleep
5. I Wish I...
6. Coast
7. Does Anyone Love Me Now?
8. Doubtful Comforts
9. Rebecca
10. Imaginary Fights

Running time: 45 minutes
Released: 2008

For the second time in recent days, two things in a row with the same duration (assuming I don't slam Benjamine Clementine in between, at least). I have a vague recollection of why I bought this - some Amazon recommendation or other based on other female singer/songwriters. That's not much of a stretch, as it is a musical furrow that I have ploughed regularly in search of new material over the years, mostly coming up disappointed as not much lives up to early Thea Gilmore for me. I don't really recall how any of this goes though and I'd rather not prejudge it.

We open with a piano melody. I guess by default I was expecting guitar so that was a nice surprise. The vocal is a little too ethereal for my liking, floral in places it does not always mesh ideally with the stresses on the notes beneath. The melody has nice crescendo and diminuendo, filling out growing in volume and then retracting back to simple quiet notes. The volume (in terms of mental space) is well aided by the vocal, even if it it is a little too shrill here and there. I end up on the fence over the song, but I think the melodies show promise.

There is a longer lead in to Cover Your Tracks, a nice combination of keyboard and violins. Oh, wait; it wasn't a lead in, it was the entirety of a short tune. Huh. No. It was the lead out to Greatest Thoughts - I did not see that, and it didn't feel like a lead out. There appeared to be a clean break before the melodies struck up. Interesting. When Cover Your Tracks starts for real it is a spangly plucked melody, nice. The vocal is piercingly high when it starts but there is a good sense of emotion in Laura Groves' voice as it moves over the registers with the tune. After the initial line, which felt far too high to be comfortable I rather like the singing here. In places it swamps the guitar, but that just makes the plucking more special where it recaptures the ear. Again we have a weird break mid-piece and what seems to be a new melody strikes up, but here it is more clearly a bridge.

I think this style may wear on me over 45 minutes. Nice little moments, but a little same-y in album form, perhaps and three quarters of an hour is a long time for the higher-reaching strains of her voice to worry my tolerance for high pitches. I have been sleeping like garbage this week too, so my patience is somewhat eroded through tiredness. Nothing like a nice lie-in on a Saturday to redress that, but I shall not be getting one because there is fun to be had. Can't Sleep seems like an appropriate song to start up as I am digressing into my poor sleep cycle, though the song itself is fairly snooze inducing. A simple picked melody with a bit of string support, it is not particularly stirring and as much as the pattern is pretty, I can't stare at it for ever. I find my mind drifting away because of the twee-ness.

I think these songs are too long for what they are. 5.00, 5.16, 6.53 - its a long time for tunes that lack many layers or changes of tone. I didn't write anything specific about I Am Leaving but it was the best of the tracks to date because it got through itself before the construction got dull or the voice wore on me, thus leaving the soothing melodies - Groves constructs hooks nicely - to have their positive effect before moving on. To be fair, I Wish I... feels as though it is trying to justify the longer run and I am better inclined to it because it is piano-led and less reliant on pattern. Changes of tempo help break it up, giving us movements. I take a moment to check Blue Roses' similar artists on LastFM and scratch my head; there is very little Alessi's Ark here, and definitely no She Keeps Bees. Not enough This is the Kit either. For all that, and despite the 7 minutes, I Wish I... is very nice.
 
There is something here. As much as I am not particularly enamoured of her singing, with too many high notes for my liking, I do like bits and pieces of what Groves has done here. If there was a bit more depth to the tracks - a little more to back up the nice little central themes - they could be really very catchy and memorable. As it is the veneer feels a little thin, there is not quite enough to the tracks for them to catch in the way their hooks warrants. I like the way she uses her voice, even if I think most of it is pitched too high for my taste - when she changes pitch, tone and tempo there is a real warmth to it but most of the time it has that slight warble and coldness of strain in the pitch. The biggest disconnect is between the voice and the tune behind it though; it feels like one is drawing you in whilst the other is keeping you at arms length with all its might.

That dissonance is a shame; if the two elements were more in concert then one or two of the songs here might just be elevated. It just feels a little too cobbled together to be really impressive, too shy to make the most of its positive attributes. In general I prefer the piano tunes to the guitar numbers, just reflecting my bias for the keyboard. I find it easier to forgive the repetition that sometimes creeps into the hooks because it is slightly more disguised. Mostly I found this listen too slow. I started it tired and ended it tireder. I can't say I really enjoyed it, whilst at the same time not really disliking it either. I think that ends up rather damning it with my disengagement, which is a pity because - as I said before - there are some great little elements here. Not ones I will be coming back to revisit though.