Album Review: CMAT Rids Her Heart from Agonizingly ‘Crazymad’ Love

Eccentric Irish cowgirl CMAT lets her past demons run free and throw a heartbroken hoedown in her sophomore album, Crazymad, For Me.

Written by Isabel Alvarez

Photos courtesy of Sarah Doyle

After releasing her debut album, If My Wife New I’d Be Dead, just last year, CMAT came back guns blazing in her new, witty, anguished-but-zippy record, Crazymad, For Me. Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, who goes by the acronym CMAT, spends the album reflecting on the mistreatment she endured in a past relationship and how time has given the situation more faces, a broadened perspective into herself, and a less clouded understanding of knowing what she wants. The title of the album echoes this sentiment, being a line from Sheena Easton’s “Morning Train (9 to 5).” As CMAT described on her social media, Easton’s song is about a girl being so in love with her boyfriend that she sits and waits like a dog for him to return. The Irish songstress clarified that while that might have been endearing in 1981, when the track was originally released, “that’s not right, that’s not how a relationship should work.”

Coming in with a full force of feral energy, the album opens with “California,” a song about embracing the chaos brought onto you by someone else. Even blaming herself a bit, she asks “What did I think that a bouncy castle Catholic could give to me but a little wine and God?” Like the opening song on If My Wife New I’d Be Dead, “Nashville,” CMAT dreams of being anywhere but here. This time, though, she does not want to disappear — she wants to pack her emotional baggage and head on her merry way towards the life she desires. Soft hi-hat taps and delicate guitar drops open the song, creating a passageway for a chorus of laid-back drumbeats and uplifting strings. As the aural journey comes to a close, the fervor in her proclamations become amplified by a dizzying craze of violins.

After “California,” the country singer divides the record into 3 phases: feeling herself slip away while trying to hold onto love, realizing that she was only slowing the death of her relationship, and protecting herself from any more hurt by finally leaving her partner. Throughout all of these phases, CMAT carries unique, eclectic pop culture references spanning from bald soccer players in “Vincent Kompany,” to Jimi Hendrix’s green parakeets in “Have Fun!,” to English reality TV scandals in “Phone Me.” The songstress’s pulse on pop culture combined with her hyper-specific descriptions of feelings makes for overall very smart, playful, and honest lyricism. 

In “Phone Me,” “Vincent Kompany,” and “Such a Miranda,” CMAT feels such immense desperation to keep her love in her life, that it causes her to lose sight of herself. She recalls her partner dismissing her feelings and not showing up for her when all she really wants him to do is to care in “Phone Me.” The rock-infused track also touches on some Greek mythology to get her point across as she asks Cassandra, who had the gift of prophecy, to help her see what she is getting into as well as referencing the Trojan horse as she sings “I bet you'd buy me a horse / Made of wood, and of course / I'd know what's up and keep it anyways.” The slow, weird-girl-core song “Vincent Kompany” has CMAT unable to recognize herself after changing for the worse in a relationship. Meanwhile, the poetic “Such a Miranda” sees CMAT reference Miranda Hobbes and Steve Brady’s complicated relationship from the show “Sex and the City” to dive into the ways she let her true self slip away to serve her partner. Her pain in trying to do what she feels is best becomes intensified in the chorus as she sings, “She was a good girl, so I pay the price / I have to stay broken to be worth your nights.” Traversing the three tracks, the melancholic tone increases as the instruments are peeled away, commencing with pounding drums, tense strings, and vibrant guitars in “Phone Me” and concluding with a singular acoustic guitar in “Such a Miranda.”

While CMAT is coming to terms with the fact that the relationship is doomed, she sings about the shifted perspective of her partner in “Rent” and “Where Are Your Kids Tonight?.” “Rent” revolves around the sad realization that all the energy one puts into a relationship is practically for nothing, singing “I died for you but here’s the twist / I was loving something that didn’t exist.” A striking pain in her voice permeates the chorus, intensifying as the song moves from steady acoustic guitar strumming to aggressive drums, guitars, and piano in the bridge and final chorus. In the ’80s-esque “Where Are Your Kids Tonight?,” CMAT is joined by American singer John Grant to sing about deadbeat parents and how she feels lost by seeing how easy it was for them to not care about the people they should love. These two tracks highlight the absence of her love in a way that is deeply upsetting to her.

While contemplating her last partner, CMAT also holds a mirror up to her own follies in the next trilogy of songs, “Can’t Make Up My Mind,” “Whatever’s Inconvenient,” and “I… Hate Who I Am When I’m Horny.” Over a pacing snare and a twangy electric guitar, CMAT becomes wary of her relationship in “Can’t Make Up My Mind,” and in “Whatever’s Inconvenient,” she grapples with the thought that she might just be bad at love. Between the worries of being too much for her partner, her apprehension towards how deeply she loves, and feeling like she does not know what she wants, the songstress cannot help but feel like she is going in the wrong direction and possibly even dragging her partner down with her. Soft pop song “I… Hate Who I Am When I’m Horny” has CMAT confess her anxieties over having an unintentionally off-putting energy that makes her less lovable. She cites her reply to “what [are you] into?” being “God, self-destruction, and a Britney tune,” which is a very clear example of her blatantly honest lyrics. Even admitting her faults, CMAT brings a charm to her quirky character through her beautiful storytelling.

“Torn Apart” and “Stay for Something” finally reach the point of no return, where CMAT recognizes she needs to leave, even when part of her is still stuck on her partner. Both songs emanate the underlying understanding that the relationship was doomed from the start. In “Torn Apart,” she tells her partner “It’s no use, I’m too much / And you’re nothing to me but a rusted crutch.” Reverberated guitar, dreamy chimes, and airy violin all dance together to bring a freeing feeling to the song, which is complimented by CMAT’s emotionally potent and assured vocals. Donning a neon ballgown and flaunting hair teased to the ceiling in the “Stay for Something” music video, CMAT justifies staying her relationship despite knowing deep down that doing so was self-destructive. She looks back at the debris of her broken self and wonders what kept drawing her in, and, instead of cursing his name, she “[hopes he] find[s] what [he’s] looking for.” After everything, it would be beyond understandable that she would be upset and want to seek revenge, but in both songs, she makes her peace simply by getting in the weeds of what she went through and not wishing bad upon him for the pain he put her through.

In a bouncy piano track fit for a saloon, CMAT declares that she is done with it all and sends her well wishes to her ex partner in “Have Fun!” In writing this track, she yanks off her rose colored glasses, smashes them on the floor, and puts kerosene and a match to them. She takes a knife to the heartstrings holding her back and sets herself free by enthusiastically chanting “have fun ’cause I’m done.” Despite just reminiscing on the good, she names a handful of the seriously telling signs she should have left earlier as a fiddle lightens the energy of the song. CMAT compares sticking around so long to the urban legend that Jimi Hendrix is the reason Britain has an invasive species of parakeets. The tall tale claims that he released two of them in the streets of London and they engulfed the city like a wildfire.She relates this to the legend in the way that her staying in the relationship, much like the invasion of parakeets, “didn’t make sense, but it happened,” letting the problem spiral. Despite grim lyrics, “Have Fun!” reigns as a celebration; she is out of her relationship and will not put any more energy into it, making it the perfect ending to such a vivid story of an album.

Though only released a year and a half after her debut, Crazymad, For Me displays CMAT’s blooming artistry. Playing with elements of rock, psychedelia, and americana in a very cohesive way, the country-pop album shows that CMAT has a more interesting and solidified sound than her debut. Growing substantially in the past year, CMAT has received lots of buzz in Ireland and even toured with Florence + the Machine. Although her weird girl antics in country music are just getting started, CMAT has already set herself up to be an artist to be crazy-mad for.