LIVE REPORT: CMAT dazzles at the 3Olympia Theatre, Dublin

If there’s one thing to know about CMAT, it’s that she knows how to make things fun.

As she begins her four-day (yes, four) hometown residency at Dublin’s 3Olympia, CMAT emerges onto the stage with enough energy and adrenaline it’s almost exhausting to watch, and yet it’s impossible to tear your eyes away from her.

CMAT is magnetic. She begins with the rousing track ‘California’, and her voice is otherworldly, almost unbelievable– she performs difficult runs with ease as she bounces around the stage (dubbed CMAT’s Panto) in a translucent body suit. Her perfectly styled short red hair bounced around, and now-signature tooth gems sparkled under the lights.

CMAT @ 3 Olympia 29-11-23

The room is packed with people: a familiar crowd of her friends, family, and CMAT long-timers, plus a hefty percentage of new inductees won by this past year’s meteoric rise to fame. She released her sophomore album Crazymad, For Me in October, which debuted at number one on the Irish charts and received rave reviews not only within the Irish music scene but from the worldwide music scene.

At several points, she speaks directly to the audience who are putty in her hands, with her coy asides and rousing calls to dance. At one point she mentions that her entire family are in the audience, with a hilarious acknowledgement that her grandparents heard her sing about being horny (‘I... Hate Who I Am When I'm Horny’) and watched her do the splits in a translucent bodysuit.

It was hit after hit: crowd favourite ‘Peter Bogdanovich’ (“I like you, Peter/I wish you were a wife-leaver!”) was naughty fun, and the burning country-funk of ‘Whatever’s Inconvenient’ rang true.

CMAT @ 3 Olympia 29-11-23

She called for another round of applause for opener Mickey Callisto, who she proclaimed was “probably her favourite person on the planet” and that if you’d missed his opening act, you’d be “kicking yourself”.

Callisto certainly made an impression: he’d worn a stark white jumpsuit, and that paired with his jerky, uninhibited dancing made his set a sight to see. His voice was strong, and I sometimes felt like I was watching a strange, alternate universe Freddy Mercury performance. That’s not to say it was derivative– his songs were high energy and complex, and closer ‘Homospace’ was genuinely moving. He mentioned he’d be headlining Workman’s Cellar next year, and if you missed these four days at the 3Olympia you’ll want to catch him then.

At several points in the show, CMAT stopped to hold full-fledged conversations with audience members, and even that part of the show managed to be entertaining.

CMAT @ 3 Olympia 29-11-23

She was met with deafening dissent when she announced that we were approaching the end of the show (“I said, approaching, we’re not there yet!”). By this point in the show, she'd belted so often and so effortlessly that it was easy to lose sight of exactly how impressive her voice is- I have genuinely no idea how she's managed to keep her voice so clear after weeks of touring, but whatever it is it's working wonders.

As a pre-encore closer she played the absolute banger ‘Where Are Your Kids Tonight?’ which originally featured American musician John Grant, but this time was a duet with bandmate Colm who was nearly as entertaining as CMAT herself.

After a tiny, blink-and-you’d-miss-it break between main show and encore, she reemerged armed with her guitar. She played ‘Rent’, which is her “saddest song”, but the sadness didn’t last– she followed it up with the roaring ‘I Wanna Be A Cowboy, Baby!’ whose chorus she and her band “milked the absolute shit out of”, and after some vamping over drum-related technical issues brought the house down with ‘Stay For Something’.

It would be irresponsible of me not to tell you to try and catch her at the Olympia before she leaves, though tickets will likely be hard to come by (and have been since she announced the gigs).

There are artists that you know are destined for stardom– but watching CMAT was something special because everyone in that room knew we were witnessing the future.

CMAT @ 3 Olympia 29-11-23