More about: CMAT

CMAT is the alias of Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, a 25-year-old singer-songwriter who writes infectious, hilarious, and regularly moving country-pop songs about topics as varied as love, inertia, Robbie Williams, and Diet Coke.

Her debut album, If My Wife New I’d Be Dead, arrives this Friday (4 March). We sat down with her to find out more about the album, its influences, and its puzzling title...

Gigwise: I wanted to ask you first of all about Diet Coke. You mention Diet Coke twice on the record, and I wondered how much Diet Coke you drink? 

Ciara Thompson: *Brandishing a can* About four to five cans a day. I used to do about eight. I can’t describe how unhealthily I used to live. I just never drank water which was the problem. 

GW: What about on gigs? Are you having to constantly go off-mic to belch?

CT: I regularly belch on stage. I have a good method of belching with my mouth closed and then just filling up my cheeks with gas and air. I don’t think I’ve ever said that out loud before and I’m now realising I regularly doing that on stage. 

GW: In the music video for your single 'Lonely', you’re roller-skating. Are you an avid roller skater?

CT: So, I think like a lot of other girlies on TikTok during season two of lockdown (which I consider January to April 2021), I bought a pair of roller-skates because I followed a couple of girlies who were roller-skating all the time. So I skated around my mam’s sitting room every day for about a month. Then I moved to London in May 2021, explicitly to record the album, and after recording the album I just never skated again. Then when I first heard the master of the song 'Lonely' I remember thinking: "that’s a roller-skating video”. 

GW: And when it came to shooting it, was it a challenge getting back on the skates?

CT: It was okay, actually. The day before we filmed I had a day of skate training and basically did a crash course. I don’t know if you noticed…maybe I’m revealing a trick of the trade...but I did have a stunt double. 

GW: I feel like music videos are more important than ever to a musician’s artistry. How important are they to you?

CT: They’re very important to me. I think visuals and aesthetics in general are something I think about more than a lot of artists. I always have to start the idea, like I want to be roller skating in this video, or I want to be riding a horse in this video, or it needs to be 1978. The process is the same with music too—it’s just about getting your references, and getting as many niche and specific references as possible. You can’t just pull references for music videos from other music videos. For the 'I Don’t Really Care For You' video, the reference is a Nestlé ad from Japan. 

GW: The snakeskin skirt-suit in that video is incredible. I’m obsessed with it. 

CT: Thank you! I still have it!

GW: I’d be wearing that every day. We should probably talk about the album a little bit. I’ve got to ask about the title. Why the unconventional spelling—what’s the story there?

CT: Do you know what is really funny? And you’re not going to believe this. You’re actually the first fucking person to ask me! I’ve been waiting for so long to tell this story and nobody will ask me.

GW: Well I’ve asked you!

CT: *Pulling an enormous book from a shelf behind her*

This is a book called The Dreamer’s Dictionary, and when I was 18 years old I was on a bus on my way to what I now believe was supposed to be an intervention for me because I was very mentally unwell. This book was on a shelf and the bus came to a stop and the driver slammed on the brakes and this hit me in the head. And I opened it up and there’s an inscription. On this side it says “MARY, HOPE THIS BOOK FINDS YOU SOME PIECE OF MIND. LOVE ALWAYS, YOUR UNDERCOVER LOVER, MARK CARROLL. GOD BLESS ALWAYS”, and on this side it says “IF MY WIFE NEW I’D BE DEAD. LOVE ALWAYS, MARK CARROLL.”

GW: That’s unbelievable.

CT: Also, when you go through the book, there are all these things that are underlined, clearly by Mark Carroll, and they’re all kind of sexual things! One of them was like “Bouncing up and down like a kangaroo”. So I found this hilarious, and I get to the restaurant and I show them the book, and we talked and laughed about it for the entire time we were there. Then at the end of it, they were just like “You’re okay, ain’t ya?”.

I always think of that incident as something indicative of a problem—not only in the Irish psyche but it is an Irish thing—where people will use humour and comedy as a coping mechanism, which is fine and good because it’s really important to laugh about things. But at the same time, people regularly use humour to deflect and to get out of something they’re uncomfortable with and to not deal with their problems. This incident was so indicative of that, and that whole notion of the double-edged sword of comedy and humour is essentially the theme of the album.  

GW: You don’t go in for a cryptic lyric. Is it important to you that your listeners understand what you mean in a song?

CT: I do use really plain language and I think that’s because I like distinct language and I do like to be direct. But it’s funny because no matter how direct I am and no matter how laser-focused I am with the message, people still have it open to interpretation. 

GW: Do you feel okay about the fact that people have different understandings of your songs?

CT: I think that’s brilliant. I think that’s the point! I write songs about me and for me. Songs are useful: if I write a song about something, it means I’m on my way to solving a problem. When other people relate to songs in a way I’d never have guessed, I think that’s great. 

GW: Across the album there are all these Americana influences in the music and lyrics. Why? Have you ever been to Nashville?

CT: No, I just love country music: I love the stories about people who make it, I love the vocals, I love the pageantry of it. I love the fact that, particularly in the '70s, you had very poor people trying to make themselves look as rich as possible. And they were nicer to look at than a boring rich person who just looks rich. I also love that women were able to make a footing for themselves from quite early on in the genre. Bobbie Gentry was not only writing and recording her own music, but producing her own records. Also Loretta Lynn is my favourite artist of all time probably—all of her songs are about her. She didn’t need to look at anybody else’s life because everything about her is so interesting. I love country music, and I love cowboys too!

GW: On your debut album, did you feel a lot of pressure to make a definitive statement about who you are?

CT: I didn’t think about it too much and that helped. The way to make a definitive statement about yourself is just to do things you enjoy and like. The internet has made people wildly self-aware and also aware of other people’s opinions, but when you’re writing a song, you shouldn’t care about other people. 

GW: Thank you so much for this!

CMAT: Thanks so much for asking about the fucking album name!

If My Wife New I'd Be Dead arrives 4 March via AWAL.

Issue Three of the Gigwise Print magazine is preselling now! Order here.

More about: CMAT