Album Review CMAT - If My Wife New I’d Be Dead

Considering her sweepingly-coiffed, tassels ’n’ rhinestones aesthetic, perhaps the most surprising thing about country pop jokester CMAT’s debut is that a fair whack of the grammatically-perplexing ‘If My Wife New I’d Be Dead’ isn’t nearly as country as you might imagine. Though it opens with a paean to escaping to Nashville and closes with a yeehaw-worthy one-two of self-explanatory previous single ‘I Wanna Be A Cowboy, Baby!’ and the twanging, acoustic string plucks of ‘I’d Want U’, there’s plenty nestled in between that pulls from shimmering pop (‘No More Virgos’), American indie (‘Every Bottle (Is My Boyfriend)’) and plenty more besides. It’s a smart move that means ‘If My Wife New…’ feels like a more well-rounded, modern proposition than one solely indebted to the oldest style going could suggest. While CMAT’s love of soaring, dusty melodies and heart-on-sleeve emoting is evident, she’s also a keenly specific storyteller, musings over adulterous film directors on ‘Peter Bogdanovich’ and throwing in references to Bacardi Breezers and Marian Keyes on ‘I Don’t Really Care For You’. It all works together, amping up the winking, cheeky side of country while also showing CMAT to be an artist enthralled by the genre but not beholden to it.