Benjamin Clementine bewitches with striking songs at Kessler Theater

Everything about Benjamin Clementine is, at first glance, turned inward.

The London native, cutting a sleek, rather vertical figure (he stands about 6’4”), sits at a grand piano not on the traditional piano bench, but rather a stool.

He folds his lithe frame, topped by an angular shock of hair, at a 45 degree angle, holding his narrow, woolen trenchcoat to his body — no shirt, no shoes — and letting his slender fingers glide over the keys, a light, delicate complement to his revelatory tenor.

But every so often, and with considerable force, the 27-year-old Clementine, making his North Texas debut Saturday before a largely rapt, appreciative audience at the Kessler Theater, would rear back and let some wordless arc tear out of him — dipping low and soaring high, reaching up to some unseen place only he could glimpse, and only he could reach.

Again and again through Clementine’s 65-minute, 10-song set, the rising British star — he took home the prestigious Mercury Prize last year for his evocative debut, At Least for Now — would render moments that seemed to suspend time, pulling every person in the room close to him, as if a powerful magnet was tucked inside his piano.

Clementine, whose biography is as gripping as his songs (he spent a brief period living on the streets of Paris, and now finds himself a muse for fashion houses like Burberry), draws upon poetry, classical music and more contemporary influences like Antony Hegarty to fashion a style of music that often evokes poetry more than straightforward chamber pop.

The images flood the senses like a torrent: “I’m alone in a box of stone,” he sings at the beginning of Cornerstone; “I walk around the boulevards, looking for magicians,” Clementine crooned in the evening’s opener, Then I Heard a Bachelor’s Cry.

His voice, in particular, is often compared to Nina Simone’s, and there’s more than a little damn-the-torpedoes sensibility he shares with the late jazz legend as well.

Over the course of his brief performance, I observed several couples heading for the exit, although Clementine was nothing but deferential to the room, making barely audible remarks between songs — he’s a fan of Texas food, not so much the heat — and pouring himself into the music.

“Sanity is the reason why I’m sitting here,” he offered at one point. “I hope you find whatever you’re looking for.”

Perhaps it was the unpredictable, slightly abstract nature of his material — the lone cover, Nick Drake’s River Man, stood out largely because it was the most conventionally structured tune Clementine performed all evening — or maybe those bailing early did not really know what to make of this largely unknown quantity.

Experiencing something new can be an uncertain proposition, but one well worth accepting.

As Benjamin Clementine revealed over the course of his electrifying performance Saturday, the rewards for opening up — from turning inward to reaching out; the blossoming of a phenomenal talent — more than justify the risk.

This story was originally published July 24, 2016 at 12:07 AM with the headline "Benjamin Clementine bewitches with striking songs at Kessler Theater."