CMAT @ Scarborough Open Air Theatre in Scarborough

About the artist

CMAT — pronounced “see-mat” — is the stage name of Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, born in Dublin in 1996 and raised in County Meath. She dropped out of Trinity College Dublin, went to Denmark for a songwriting camp, and ended up in Manchester in a band with a then-boyfriend she has since described as a toxic chapter. A chance encounter with Charli XCX at a studio in London gave her the advice she needed: rethink everything. She dumped the boyfriend, moved back to Dublin and started self-releasing music. Her debut album If My Wife New I’d Be Dead (2022) went straight to number one on the Irish Albums Chart, won the Choice Music Prize for Album of the Year and was met with what Metacritic classified as “universal acclaim”. The second album Crazymad, for Me (2023) — a concept album about a 47-year-old CMAT travelling back in time — also debuted at number one and was nominated for the Mercury Prize and the Ivor Novello Award. In August 2025 the third album Euro-Country arrived. Musically, CMAT blends country, folk, indie pop and Irish tradition with a humour and emotional directness that makes her impossible to place in a single category. The songs deal with heartbreak, identity, class and contemporary Irish history — the title track “Euro-Country” confronts the 2008 financial crisis and its consequences for Irish working-class communities, complete with references to former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern. She sings with a powerful soprano that can carry both grief and sarcasm in the same phrase, and has been compared to everyone from Dolly Parton to Kate Bush to John Grant. She was nominated for International Artist of the Year at the 2024 BRIT Awards. Live, CMAT is an entertainer in the most generous sense of the word — theatrical, funny, direct and with an ability to make an entire audience feel like they are part of something. She is openly bisexual, a vocal advocate for Palestinian rights and trans rights, and has said she makes music “for the girls and the gays, and that’s it”. When she takes the stage, she does so with a confidence so uncompromising that it is contagious.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Lineup

• CMAT · headliner
• Katy J Pearson