Label: AWAL
Released: 4th March 2022
“Who needs God when I’ve got Robbie Williams.”
As with so many things, a lyric often sums up ‘the state of things’ far better than paragraphs of musing prose. It’s a trick that CMAT’s debut album ‘If My Wife New I’d Be Dead’ achieves with unerring regularity, but never more so than when considering just how vital pop stars can be. Larger than life, be it writing about emotional turmoil over a catchy hook or bringing a bit of levity to a difficult world with some industrial-grade nonsense, a good one is the bright spark at the end of an increasingly dark tunnel. By that stretched metaphor, CMAT is a military-grade spotlight.
Across its twelve tracks, ‘If My Wife New I’d Be Dead’ is a uniquely brilliant window into a world spinning on its own gloriously wonky axis. The country-pop label that it may attract is a false flag – a suggestion that this is a record that sits alongside other far less idiosyncratic peers. Packed with wry humour, self-knowing snark and razor-sharp observations, it may draw from a genre which isn’t scared of a good joke, but never quite like this. From the swooning daddy issues turned dark siren song of ‘Peter Bodganovich’ to the exhausted, identifiable sway of ‘2 Wrecked 2 Care’, each listen highlights another shiny lyrical gem. But while for many such swaggering mischief might be distracting, with CMAT it’s a shot of spicy heat to a thick, sweet musical honey. Great music, big personality and a sense of fun that never loses the run of itself – who needs religion when we have CMAT to guide us?
