Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, known as CMAT, blends Irish indie, country and pop with eccentric, relatable songwriting on Euro-Country. Songs range from the chugging indie earworm 'The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station', which turns an irrational hatred of a celebrity chef into observations about social anxiety and aesthetics, to 'Running/Planning', which pairs cool R&B-pop with surreal lyrics about an imaginary boyfriend. The album includes personal vignettes such as waxing legs aged nine in 'Take a Sexy Picture of Me' and meditations on self-perfection in 'Ready'. Multiple cultural references and camp humour populate the record.
She may unite two of the mid-2020s most pervasive cultural trends the so-called green wave of zeitgeist-dominating Irish actors, authors and musicians; and the irreverent embrace of country music by pop stars such as Beyonce, Lana Del Rey and Chappell Roan but you don't need to spend much time in the company of 29-year-old Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson to realise she's a total one-off.
Who else would come out with a chugging indie earworm called The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station, in which an irrational hatred of the celebrity chef and his Shell deli franchise (That man should not have his face on posters!) leads her to grasp frantically at slippery observations about social anxiety and her own aesthetic sensibilities?
Thompson who won instant acclaim in Ireland with her 2022 debut If My Wife New I'd Be Dead, and cemented her status in the UK with its Mercury-nominated follow-up Crazymad, for Me is not kooky in the manic pixie dream girl sense, or leftfield in an alienating radical way. Instead, she is deeply relatable in her weirdness.
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