WORDS Bronagh Hughes
PHOTOGRAPHY Eszter Vujosevic
In an interview last year, CMAT said that “All CMAT fans are in Stoke Newington. They’re all there, or in Hackney, and they’re all Irish or lesbians.”
Well, at her latest performance, the lesbians of London, as well as seemingly half the Irish population of England, were out in force. At CMAT’s Alexandra Palace show, it’s hard not to feel that the new celtic revival in pop culture has reached absolute fever pitch. Jonathan Anderson, Jessie Buckley, Spicebags – Ireland has never been cooler. CMAT’s Alexandra Palace show (the weekend before St. Patrick’s day, no less) feels like a saturation point, a total Irish cultural victory. 10,000 people in north London crying about Bertie Ahern while wearing cowboy boots.
This is CMAT’s biggest ever headline show, and she has come a long way since my first spin round, back in November 2021. With just a few singles out, her first London performance was in the basement of The Troubadour, a pub venue in Earls Court. I spent a period of the pandemic driving my dad’s pickup truck around rural Ireland blasting her early breakout single, ‘I Wanna Be a Cowboy Baby’, so even that first show felt like seeing an old friend. Even then, tickets went fast, and there was a sense that something special was in its infancy. At that stage she described herself, with a knowing wink, as a “self-proclaimed global pop star who lives at home with her grandparents”. I may not have anticipated that in just a few short years she’d be on stage at Ally Pally, in dartboard-inspired tights, flashing her bum to an adoring crowd, but the seeds had been sown.
Early in the performance, our very own Dunboyne Diana told us that if there is one thing to know about her and the band, “it’s that we fucking love the darts”. As it turns out, this becomes something of a guiding principle for the whole show. The entire band were decked out in a captivating sort of ‘gothic-darts-chic’ look, and we were warned early on to expect some surprises.
As the band finished playing ‘Have Fun’, CMAT briefly allowed herself to acknowledge the sheer scale of the crowd, as the entire venue raised their hands in the air, following her in a dance in which mimics the parakeets of south London. However, at this moment the klaxons blared, and a darts break was declared. Somewhat surreally, Harry Hill then strode out from backstage wearing an enormous velcro dartboard. It was hilarious, ridiculous, and it was also absolutely one-of-one. This bit, as well as the wider performance, did an excellent job of making a big concert feel like a small one. This version of the show can only work in this venue, this joke is only for tonight’s audience, the crowd feels a part of something unique and intimate in one of London’s biggest indoor venues.
Shortly after the darts break, we go into ‘Take a Sexy Picture of Me’, CMAT’s viral mega-hit about the scrutiny, body shaming, and relentless criticism she has received as a woman in the public eye. The subject matter is heavy, but the energy in the room is joyous (dance trend and all). This is what CMAT does best, balancing emotional heft with genuine humour. The art she has created is unflinchingly sincere, but she outright refuses to take herself too seriously. The atmosphere this creates in the room is euphoric; the crowd screams, sings, dances, laughs, and cries.
It’s a delicate balance that she has pulled off masterfully. As her audience has scaled up considerably, she doesn’t shy away from specificity. This tracklist is full of autobiographical detail, but this makes the songs more emotionally resonant, not less. We may not all have been depressed while living down the road from the Coronation Street set, but many of us have been lost and lonely in our early twenties. We may not all have gone through the 2008 financial crash in Dunboyne, County Meath, but we may as well have. Her audience has grown substantially, but she doesn’t need to speak in broad strokes in order to make us feel something. Before CMAT’s arrival on stage, the show had kicked off with a premier of her new music video for ‘The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station’, featuring the man himself. The video feels almost like a manifesto for this new, honest-to-god popstar CMAT; high production value and celebrity talent, but still anchored by personality and character, remaining true to her tragicomic sensibilities.
At Alexandra Palace, CMAT hit the bullseye, and turned a large venue into something that felt genuinely intimate. Hopefully Luke Litter walks out to ‘Euro-Country’ on his next visit.
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