CMAT: Euro-Country review – deeply relatable, gloriously catchy Celtic pop from a true one-off

(CMATBaby)
Who else could combine soul, yodelling, Jamie Oliver and Calpol into such charming songs about the messy modern psyche? Only Europe’s best new breakout star

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 Beyoncé, 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? Even the most conventional song on Euro-Country, the cool R&B-pop of Running/Planning, is laden with bonkers lyrics about creating an imaginary boyfriend, ripping his head off and then promising to buy said head a Nintendo and “all the games”.

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. On the saccharine soul of Take a Sexy Picture of Me, she captures the formative nature of toxic femininity by recounting an attempt to wax her legs with tape aged nine, while on Ready she’s mired in the message – pedalled by Gwyneth et al – that women must engage in infinite self-perfection at the expense of actual living. In Coronation St, waiting for her life to start, over strummed guitar, she feels like a soap barmaid with no lines. In fact, Corrie gets more than one shout-out on her third album, which is enriched by a jumble of cultural references – Dorian Gray, Veruca Salt, Calpol, Kerry Katona – both a sign of camp humour and a voracious mind seeking to explain and evoke thoughts that exist just beyond the fringes of everyday conversation.