S He can combine two of the most pervasive cultural trends of the mid-2020s—the so-called “green wave” of Irish actors, authors, and musicians that dominated the Zeitgeist; and the likes of Beyoncé, Lana Del Rey, and Chappell Roan—and you don’t have to spend much time with 29-year-old Ciara Mary-Alice-Alice-Alice Thompson to realize that she’s utterly unique. Who else would come up with a squeaky-clean indie earworm called Jamie Oliver’s Petrol Station, in which an irrational hatred of the celebrity chef and his shell deli franchise (“that a person shouldn’t have their face on posters!”) makes her mindlessly grasp at slick observations about social anxiety and her own aesthetic sensibilities? Even the most ordinary song about Euro-country, cool running/planning R&B-pop, is filled with bonkers lyrics about creating an imaginary friend, getting his head chopped off, and then promising to buy said Nintendo and “all the games.”
Thompson, who won instant acclaim in Ireland with her 2022 debut If My Wife Were Young, and cemented her status in Britain with her Mercury-nominated follow-up Crazymad, is not kooky in the manic pixie dreamgirl sense or left-field alienating radical way. Instead, she is deeply relatable in her weirdness. In the saccharine soulful Sexy Me, she captures the formative nature of toxic femininity, telling of trying to wax her legs with tape at the age of nine, while in Ready she is immersed in the message-Gwyneth et al. Coronation St, waiting for her life to begin, over Strummed Guitar, she feels like a soap barista without lines. In fact, Corey gets more than one shout-out for his third album, which is peppered with cultural references—Dorian Gray, Veruca Salt, Kalpol, Kerry Katona—both a sign of camp humor and a ruthless wit that seeks to explain and evoke thoughts that are just outside of everyday conversation.
One of those emotional landscapes is also geographical: among Euro-Country’s main concerns is Thompson’s complex feelings about her homeland. Combining mundane regional commercialism with gaudy, chintzy folk art, the album cover is a nod to Ireland’s mystical reputation, depicting a musician emerging from a city-centre fountain in hyper-saturated colour. But then she engages in her opening Billy Byrne of the pigeon caravan leader Ballybrack’s dreel romanticism, which applies an echo filter and gently builds a synthetic backdrop to record a man discussing the windy conditions, his words imbued with a soporific warmth that is at once familiar and otherworldly.
One song later, on the title track and the undisputed pinnacle, Thompson fuses the country’s history of economic dignity (“I was 12 when das started killing myself all around”) with sour reminders of her own stultified teenage case in a county that is Meath (“all that ‘Mooching’ round shops, and if there’s no identity,” and all that is shown in the mix, which is neat, neat mix, neat, neat mix, neat, that it’s perfect, that it’s perfect, and all that is made into the mix, which is neat, neat mix, neat that it’s perfect. Lana-esque melancholy and chipmunk vocals reminiscent of Norwich experimentalists Let’s Eat Grandma. And it’s funny. And it’s catchy.
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“I Was Waiting for Love / With a Cricket Bat,” begins As a Good Man Weeps, a gorgeous grid that marries frenetic violin and cheesy ’90s country pop with sublime Fleetwood Mac-style harmonies. Miraculously, the Euro-Country-esque lyrics never unsettle the music, which is often subtle but equally sophisticated—from Janis Joplin’s maximalist blues to the wooden Six Four’s supporting gothic instrumental—and is always a great showcase for Thompson’s lovely voice.
Euro-country, however, is exceptional because Thompson consistently strives—sometimes somberly, sometimes earnestly, always entertainingly—to capture the gritty psychological interiority that doesn’t fit the mold of the typical pop song. The appropriate indie number, Lord, Let the Tesla Crash, is a tribute to an old housemate who passed away, but any threat of mindless sentimentality is immediately picked apart as Thompson confesses, “I miss you the way I should.” Her grief is entangled with emotional avoidance and unattached attachment (a recurring theme); her pain sublimated into a rage directed at the Tesla owner who has parked outside their old home. It’s classic CMAT: a roving sea of charm, chaos, substance, sadness, and piercing insight—and yet more proof that this budding star is in a class of her own.
