Between dance, melancholy and politics, CMAT, the Irish pop earthquake

It's a turquoise water fountain planted in the middle of a suburban shopping center, from which emerges a woman with fiery hair, dressed all in blue.

Inspired by Jean-Léon Gérôme's Truth Coming Out of the Well (1896), this image, which the British daily The Guardian considers “striking,” serves as the cover of Ciara's third album.

Mary-Alice Thompson aka CMAT.

Released on August 29, it was unanimously acclaimed in the English-speaking press.

With Euro-Country (the album's title, "written in a Gaelic font dear to Irish pubs," jokes the Guardian ), the 29-year-old singer delivers an album that is even more political than her two previous albums.

“Whatever the future holds, by combining lamenting the decline of the Celtic Tiger with dancing in a shopping mall fountain, CMAT has already given 21st ^- century Irish pop one of its defining images,” says the Irish daily The Irish Times .

How? “For example, with the video for her song Euro-Country, a heartbreaking track in which she returns, in a melancholic dream-pop style, to the implosion of Ireland in the wake of the 2008 crisis,” continues The Irish Times .

At a time when Ireland occupies a prominent place in Western culture, “more fetishized and trendy than it has ever been,” CMAT reminds the Guardian, this new album tends to remind us that it is a romanticized version of Ireland.

“It's a tough place to live, especially as a child or teenager. Unless you have money, which we didn't. So, magical Ireland, beautiful Ireland, fairytale Ireland... It's a shopping mall. That's what I grew up in: a shopping mall.”

“The recent history of Ireland is a common thread of the album, where we come across lyrics in Irish Gaelic, a piece called Billy Byrne From Ballybrack, the Leader of the Pigeon Convoy and Tree Six Foive, and a title track that CMAT presents as 'a collage, a kind of mood board ' about the financial crisis that plunged the country into in 2008,” continues The Guardian .

“Nobody is tackling this capitalism which is a real force of evil, this fucking filthy rotten version of capitalism which has been shooting coke up its asshole since Covid, to the point that the richest people on the planet are even richer.

than five years ago.”

CMAT in the British daily The Guardian

Euro-Country also deals with social media and body shaming (with Take a Sexy Picture of Me ).

“Her new album is superb,” critic Alexis Petridis wrote in the British daily. “It pushes the boundaries of what she’s done so far to explore new territory: the synth avalanche on the title track, the soulful pop on Running/Planning, the distorted alternative rock on The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station .”

“I want to be taken seriously,” the soon-to-be-thirty-year-old confided to the British website Dazed .

“I don’t intend to behave like a man to be taken seriously. I want people to see me as the artist I am: a writer, a producer, all that. But I’m not going to start wearing a leather jacket and jeans just to go home.

in their boxes.”

Irish singer CMAT in British magazine Dazed

And CMAT's commitment is not limited to words.

For example, she is one of the artists who withdrew from Latitude and other festivals due to sponsorship by Barclays Bank, accused of investing in Israeli arms.

“I don't give a damn about putting my foot in it, about making a mistake. We've all been too measured, too cautious, because we're always being watched. I think you have to be prepared to fail. Even if it's pointless, you have to try. Otherwise, it's too depressing,” the singer told the Guardian .

“All my fans are Irish

or lesbians.”

CMAT at the British magazine Dazed

Let's leave the conclusion to journalist Ed Power, in The Irish Times : “CMAT offers us an album like only the best pop can produce, mixing joy and sadness in the same breath, and which makes you want to cry as much as to dance.” —