I Tell a Fly

Just like all the very best albums, I Tell A Fly is by turns thought provoking, musically challenging and genre defying but perhaps more importantly, it imbues a sense of uniqueness that suggests you can’t imagine anyone else making it.

To call I Tell a Fly a difficult listen may be understating it, but within this madcap art-pop song cycle, which is purportedly about two flies in love, are some genuine payoffs for those with the patience to stick with it.

By and large though, this challenging, multi-layered record requires complete and sustained immersion to properly appreciate its full range of ideas and textures.

I Tell a Fly is far more than any one element though. Clementine creates a wonderful flow between tracks, happy to sink into instrumental sections as he mixes up pace.

Enjoy this singular album, this moment, while you can--Clementine won’t be holding his breath.

Supremely confident as it is poetically singular, it's evidence that BC's vision will see him through the long haul. [Nov 2017, p.24]

Follow Clementine's muse, and the pay-off is huge. [Oct 2017, p.91]

Anyone expecting an album of unchallenging fodder is in for a shock. Like the voyage faced by its desperate, stateless subjects, I Tell A Fly is no easy ride. [Oct 2017, p.101]

Though he’s undoubtedly an anachronistic anomaly whose idiosyncratic style (think Tom Waits meets Edith Piaf in a 19th Century music hall) appears out of kilter with convention, he has, nevertheless, produced an essential soundtrack to our times.

With its classical and avant-garde stylings and Clementine’s sometimes queasily operatic delivery, I Tell A Fly won’t be to everyone’s taste--which in this era of increasing conformity may be its most valuable asset.

It’s not an immediate album, but give a little time for the scattershot approach to sink in and moments of genius gradually reveal themselves.

Clementine clearly has things to say about some important topics, and it’s hard not to think they might reach a wider audience if they were a little less obliquely presented. Equally, there’s something laudable about an artist using their initial success not as a foundation for steady commercial growth but as leverage to get something like I Tell a Fly released and promoted by a major label.