In one, he improvises a highly autobiographical version of “Voodoo Chile” that suggests what Simone would’ve sounded like had she covered Hendrix. Clementine in concert began to turn up on YouTube. Clementine reported while declining to reveal what was said.) Last year, he played the Montreal and Montreux jazz festivals.

In October of that year, he appeared on BBC’s “Later… with Jools Holland.” Among the other guests on the program were Arctic Monkeys, Gary Clark Jr. Clementine found a manager and in 2013 released his first EP. While playing in Cannes during the annual film festival, Mr. In his Simone-like “Adios,” he offers a glimpse of how he moved toward maturity: “Adios to the little child in me / Who kept on blaming everyone else / Instead of facing his own defeat.” For the first time, he began to feel confident in his talent.

Having migrated to Paris, where he busked for coins, he came to realize he preferred singing his own compositions. Basic survival was the objective, he added, but a yearning to play music returned. When his parents divorced, he quit school and moved out: “I felt there was no difference if I left or not,” he said. Clementine said he was self-taught, starting piano at age 11 only to give it up a few years later. “Excuse me, I’m in the middle of a song,” he sings in “The People and I.” In “Condolence,” he states: “Out of absolutely nothing, I, Benjamin, I was born / So that when I become someone one day / I will always remember that I came from nothing.”ĭuring a phone call from Paris last week, Mr. On occasion, he augments or departs from traditional lyrical form to heighten tension, much as would singers he admires like Charles Aznavour and Edith Piaf. Clementine emerges as a distinctive talent, even if his influences, such as Nina Simone and the French melodramatic song form nouvelle chanson, are apparent. On “At Least for Now,” which has been available in Europe since January and was released here last week, the Paris-based 26-year-old Mr.

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