Reading her name, you wonder how it is pronounced and what words are hidden behind these initials. In the end, everything is very simple: the letter C is read as sigma, and these are just the initials of her real name: Kiara Mary Alice Thompson.

After all, everything around the songs of this 27-year-old musician seems out of place. But it’s also kind of weird. HOUR SMAT is irish woman, her hair and her face leave no room for thought about anything else. Her working hours a country of course, were forever set to her music, which you could swear was written in “Nashville” refer to its title track. And she often sings as if she never came to terms with the fact that at 14 she was obsessed with her. Kate Bush.

All this binds you pop ringtones which, no matter how sunny they are, are offset by a large dark themes which is always done with a witty joke. CMAT describes bottles of alcohol with broken relationships, says she feels very rock and roll but looks like a geography teacher, has a soft spot for cowboys, and gave her debut album a bizarre misspelled title. “If my wife was new, I would be dead” (more on that later).

But what makes a little Irish girl love the country? “Johnny Cash looked like Beyoncé when I was little. Although I grew up in Dublin, which is far from America, Irish pop culture has a very strong American element. And especially the country music of the 70s around me was very much, “says the musician from the other end of the video call. As expected, he speaks in the same way as he writes the lyrics, that is, without embellishment:” Country music in Ireland also has a great domestic tradition But I don’t like the country music of my country, it’s only for the Franks.”

WTC is located at Brighton and although the weather is a little hot, he has just returned from the sea. Now he lives there, as things are not so simple in Ireland. Before moving, she lived with her grandparents – information that can also be found on her official website.

CMAT songs are full contrasts and, surprisingly, you can hear the Italo-disco nugget in the ballad that openly flirts with the American South. Elements that just happened when she was making her first record: “I was making pop music and then recording it with all these different sonic elements,” she says, admitting how much she loves contrasts.

And they are undeniably funny. Humor is what he resorts to whenever he finds himself in a difficult situation. Actually, the so-called “funeral humor” as he explains. “You know, when someone has died and the atmosphere is very heavy, but suddenly the funniest thing happens at the funeral. I believe that this logic is a way to cope and endure. I hope that if I can turn something difficult into something beautiful, maybe I can help some people deal with it.”

So she prefers to perform in her music in an accessible way the most inaccessible and he’s… allergic to all those musicians who commodify pain: “A lot of musicians deal with mental health issues. It’s great, but I often think they use it. And finally, they inflate it.”

There can be no doubt that CMAT’s music is made with care, as evidenced by the way it combines what characterizes it and what it loves, but it follows a different philosophy, far from what the creator’s cliché dictates: “When I hear them say: “I have been working on this record for so many years, this is my whole life,” I can’t, I’m disgusted. I think I’m allergic to seriousness. I don’t have that kind of relationship with music. I do my job and express myself through it. Maybe I’m dealing with a difficult topic for me, but I want to make it interesting, not make people cry.”

Very simple, “I like to be stupid” recognized as a musician. Something that doesn’t hide the fact that it’s already hurt her. Why would she want people to take her music seriously and not hers, but someone once didn’t either, since early in her career she heard from a journalist that she wouldn’t be doing her album because “she I don’t do comedy music.”

However, this does not stop the Dublin woman, and a year after the debut, she is already working. new music, which this time will be about a breakup and which he decided to write, running away from the logic of verse-chorus, verse-chorus.

When, of course, she’s not writing songs, CMAT is fanatically watching movie. And just looking at the titles of the tracks on her first album, you understand: one of them she dubbed “Groundhog Day” and dedicates another great director “Pyotr Bogdanovich” – he even transforms into it in the video for the song, which has something from the movie “Paper Moon”.

I ask her if she has ever thought about getting into the movies. “I’m a performer, but I don’t look like someone who could easily enter the film industry. I’m not Margot Robbie, I’m more Phoebe Waller-Bridge,” she says, mocking herself to record her choice: “I think I can make music. You can make a piece at very little cost and your voice will be heard.”

In addition, she also “blocked” the big question that plagues many cinephiles, which is her favorite movie of all time: Lobster by Giorgos Lanthimos. It has something to do with the Greek director’s first foreign-language film besides artistic appreciation, as it was partly filmed in a shopping center in the area where he grew up and where he went for walks after school.

Having discovered the cinema of Giorgos Lanthimos, CMAT wanted to discover it too. Hellas. In recent years, she has been working continuously, and in her free time she gave concerts. With both, she realized last summer that she had been taking regular vacations since she was 17. On the spur of the moment, she booked tickets for her with her friends. Santorini.

He fell in love with her instantly. The scenery, the food, and especially the people who remind her so much of the Irish.: “It’s great to be in the most beautiful place in the world and people have a sense of humor. There are also in Dublin, only this is not the most beautiful place in the world, ”he comments enthusiastically.

The holidays are over, but not the SMAT’s fascination with our country, as she began to study it more and more. At the same time, he wrote an article entitled “Anything Uncomfortable” for which he will return one video clip. “Video clips are very complex, they require a lot of effort, a lot of work, money, and in the end they are watched by five people. But I told the record company that I don’t care, I want the video to be filmed in Greece,” he explains.

Somehow SMAT is packaged for Co., for filming a video which was also the next station he wanted to visit in Greece due to his archaeological interest in the Dodecanese island. We see her dancing along with a cute donkey on the island’s beach in the video for her new song, which was released a few weeks ago.

CMAT can’t wait to get back to Greece, she definitely wants to go there. Athena, because she hasn’t been given a chance yet.

Shortly before we have finished our conversation, I ask her one last question about how this typo came about. “new” instead of “knew” in the title of his first album. I did not expect to receive such a response:

“When I was 18, I studied at the university in Dublin. It was around the time that I quit smoking because I was dealing with a variety of issues, including a very severe eating disorder. My parents, who were divorced at the time, often sent me messages saying they wanted to see me and talk. One day, when I was about to see them, a book suddenly fell on my head and hit me. It was called The Dictionary of Dreams. But it was not a scientific book, but rather a dream book of the 70s. And on the front page was a note for a woman that read: “Mary, with love, your secret lover.” He also had a postscript: “If my wife were new, I would be dead” (translation: “If my wife knew, I would be dead”) – but with this spelling. When I got to my parents, I tried to distract them with this book so we wouldn’t have a “serious conversation”. At the end they asked me if I was okay and I said yes, at least that’s how I look.

“I used this phrase in the title of my first entry because it seemed to describe my life so far: I may be going through some really bad times and I’m going to try and convince people I’m okay by being funny. I think that’s what characterizes the Irish as a whole. You may be an alcoholic, you may be depressed, but you will make sure no one knows about it.”

One thing’s for sure: with someone like CMAT, there’s always room for good stories.