CMAT - Euro-Country
★★★★
AWAL
With Take A Sexy Picture Of Me, a sparkling, razor-sharp soul anthem about body shaming, CMAT delivered one of the best tracks of the year. Thankfully, Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson’s third album reveals there’s plenty more where that came from.
While A Good Man Cries and the barn dance-storming Tree Soix Foive are rooted in the country pop the 29-year-old broke through with, Thompson is operating on a much broader and bigger scale here. Not least with Jamie Oliver Petrol Station: an unexpected krautrock-driven thumper about being irritated by the TV chef while on tour. “I don’t know anyone that’s making anything that’s like my music,” she told MOJO’s Victoria Segal recently. “I often get really miscategorised because I dress so silly and I’m loud and I’m quite funny or whatever.”
Loaded with zingers, Thompson’s self-deprecating humour couches some sometimes painfully insightful self-revelations (“I’m a writer, I don’t do crushes / I do problematic attentions” she notes on closer Janis Joplining), and a sharper political focus (the title track details the devastating human impact of Ireland’s economic crash). While references to Kerry Katona and Coronation Street might be lost on international markets, Euro-Country is everything great pop music should be: smart, subversive, and tremendous fun.
Euto-Country is out August 29 on AWAL.
ORDER: Amazon | Rough Trade | HMV
Tracklisting:
Billy Byrne From Ballybrack, The Leader Of The Pigeon Convoy
Euro-Country
When A Good Man Cries
The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station
Tree Six Foive
Take A Sexy Picture Of Me
Ready
Iceberg
Coronation St.
Lord, Let That Tesla Crash
Running/Planning
Janis Joplining
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