CMAT
Main stage, Saturday
★★★★★
What a summer it has been for Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, aka CMAT, the country-pop sensation from Dunboyne, in Co Meath.
In June she accidentally conquered the internet after her tune Take a Sexy Picture of Me inspired a dance trend on TikTok dubbed the Woke Macarena. Shen then went viral all over again when the title track from her upcoming third album, Euro-Country, gave a starring role to the Omni shopping centre in Santry, in north Co Dublin.
Euro-Country is a melancholy song about the ruinous death of the Celtic Tiger. But the lyrics burn hot as CMAT plays it for the first time at the end of her rollercoaster main-stage turn at All Together Now, which immediately stakes a claim as performance of the weekend.
She explains that many of Ireland’s present-day challenges are a result of the crash of 2008. How strange that such a seismic event has inspired so little art and instead been quietly put away in the psychological drawer Irish people reserve for Things We Don’t Talk About.
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But Thompson has plenty to say on Euro-Country as she conjures with the ghost of the follies of the boom years with lyrics about populist politics and the devastating aftermath.
CMAT is a charismatic performer, and her music bears a lot more emotional weight than her upbeat persona might initially suggest. She opens with Have Fun!, a seemingly celebratory tune that takes as its starting point reports of parakeet colonies gone wild in London but is also about getting over a difficult break-up: she is smiling but with sadness in her eyes.
There is humour, too. Her song The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station is inspired by her experience of seeing the television chef’s likeness in motorway service stations across Britain. She grew to hate his grinning mug. The track is about her coming to terms with the fact that those emotions are her problem, not Oliver’s.
Thompson isn’t one for holding back. She laughs when someone in the crowd holds up a large “CMAT for president” sign, written in Irish, and speaks passionately about the assault on trans rights across the western world.
Saturday-evening sunshine has turned to shadows as the set draws to a close: the perfect metaphor for CMAT, the shiny pop star whose music glitters with dark depths during this powerhouse set.
