CMAT is a performer. The Irish singer-songwriter has a colossal voice, and she knows how to use it. She also has tons of ideas the kind of personality that bursts out of a laptop screen. She dances. She does bits. She gets into charming interactions with her bandmates. She makes faces that communicate and maybe exaggerate the feelings of whatever lyric she's singing. She just knows how to do this shit. On Tuesday night, CMAT gave her first-ever American television performance, and she put all those skills on display.
Big things are happening for CMAT. Last month, she released her album EURO-COUNTRY. This morning, that album was nominated for the Mercury Prize -- CMAT's second nomination in two years. On last night's episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live, CMAT did musical-guest duty. She sang the new album's lead single "Take A Sexy Picture Of Me," a chart hit in both Ireland and the UK. I can already tell that I'm going to be listening to that song a lot.
CMAT started out her Kimmel performance doing some remarkably twee Wes Anderson-style choreography with her bandmates. It's worth noting that CMAT and her bandmates all wore matching outfits, which showed a not-insignificant amount of leg. CMAT sold the absolute hell out of the song, and I love the way she bounced off her backup singer. With this performance, CMAT found a way to channel all the charisma of her festival sets into a few minutes, calibrating them for the camera expertly. I don't know if people can still blow up from viral late-night performances, but this one reminded me of the ones that Doechii was doing about a year ago, even if the genres are very different. Watch it for yourself below.
EURO-COUNTRY is out now on AWAL.
