Consumer Guide Album

CMAT: Crazymad, for Me [Cmatbaby, 2023]
Ciara Mary Alice Thompson's second album of original songs was recorded in Bergen, Norway except for one in Kingston, New York--not "California," where she threatens to flee in the opener, but not her native Dublin either. I'm on my way, she wants us to know. And while the songwriting isn't quite as strong as on last year's debut, she does well by a pervasive theme she shares with none other than album of the year favorite SZA: serial coitus, let's call it. Unlike SZA, whose vocals flex, keen, and murmur not as if but because sensuality is her default mode, CMAT's singing is leaner, cuter, and by no means shy about trying hard. But sometimes it seems as if every song finds her in bed with someone else, to less than no avail, with the title "I . . . Hate Who I Am When I'm Horny" a theme statement I wouldn't wish on people I like a lot less than I do her. "I'm sitting in an office paying 80 quid an hour to cry," she tells us. "It started ending our first week," she reckons. "No wrapped in a dressing gown, no curled on your couch," she laments. "Have fun, I'm done," she announces. "What's left for me but poetry/And getting really old?" she wonders. Most likely lots of things, I suspect. Really, girl, it's not over yet. A-