The alluring mess of CMAT
The last time I saw CMAT – Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson – was in the middle of a grey afternoon at a festival. She brought a charismatic refusal to be embarrassed to the day, and walked off with rather more fans than she had walked on with. Three albums in, she’s become a big deal – big enough to have screens at the side of the stage for the 10,000 people watching, who knew almost every word of her songs.
CMAT’s appeal, I think, is that her aesthetic is that of an ordinary woman acting out and acting up the Charli XCX image. The latter had said that her ‘brat’ aesthetic was: ‘Just, like, a pack of cigs, and, like, a Bic lighter, and, like, a strappy white top. With no bra. That’s, like, kind of all you need.’ CMAT’s version of brat summer seems to be more about late sessions at Wetherspoons than falling into the dawn from the doors of a club. A mess, not a sexy mess.
PMQs was ruined by Starmer’s verbal epilepsy
Starmer doesn’t have........
