Mercury nominee CMAT: Irish music success comes from ‘generation of trauma’
By Casey Cooper-Fiske and Tom Wilkinson, PA
Irish singer CMAT has said her country’s recent musical success comes from a “generation of traumatised people”, ahead of the Mercury Prize award ceremony.
The 29-year-old is nominated alongside fellow Irish act Fontaines DC at the event in Newcastle, for her album Euro-Country, and told the PA news agency their success came as a result of “a lot of bad fruits coming to harvest”, and added she is “very excited” about the awards.
She told PA: “I think that this is a bit of a generation of traumatised people that are getting to make music now.
“I wish I could pinpoint it to anything else, but it’s just the fact that everything is coming up through the rafters so quickly, and there’s a lot of artists from a very small, not very densely populated country, making a lot of music that feels quite important, as opposed to trivial.
“I think everybody is a bit earnest and has had their head screwed on a little bit because we all went through something 20-odd years ago my age group (the 2008 Irish economic downturn referenced on her album), and we’re now really dealing with the fall-out and the repercussions of it.
“So I think on a psychological level, everybody just kind of has that thing in common.”
The singer, whose real name is Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, and Fontaines DC are nominated alongside Pulp, Sam Fender, Wolf Alice, FKA Twigs, PinkPantheress, Pa Salieu, Emma-Jean Thackray, Jacob Alon, Joe Webb and Martin Carthy in the 12-artist shortlist.
If either indie rockers Wolf Alice or Britpop band Pulp win the prize, they will become only the second artist to have won it twice after PJ Harvey, who won it with Stories From The City in 2001 and Let England Shake in 2011.
Pulp won the prize in 1996 for their album Different Class, while Wolf Alice won with 2017’s Visions Of A Life in 2018.
Wolf Alice frontwoman Ellie Rowsell, who said she would like to see CMAT win if her own band do not, told PA their first win “meant a lot to us” and said the band were “very honoured” to win, and be back among the nominees this year.
Speaking of the award’s impact, she added: “It can be brilliant exposure. I have discovered artists through the Mercury Prize and Mercury shortlist, so it spotlights artists that some people might not have heard of. That’s one of the best things about it.”
The band have been nominated for all their studio albums, with debut My Love Is Cool missing out on the prize in 2015, and third LP Blue Weekend missing out in 2021, while Pulp were also nominated in 1994 for His ‘N’ Hers, and in 1998 for This Is Hardcore.
This year Wolf Alice are nominated for fourth studio album The Clearing, which was released in August.
Pulp drummer Nick Banks, who also wanted to see CMAT win the award, said: “I’m feeling reasonably excited, I never feel that it’s your gong to win, but yes, we’re just happy to get on the shortlist and happy to be in the party.”
Banks, whose band are nominated for the 2025 album More, said he enjoyed the awards being held in Newcastle, the first time they have been held outside London, because it was a “much shorter train journey” and “Britain’s got so much to showcase”.
This year’s awards are judged by a panel that includes jazz star Jamie Cullum, DJ Jamz Supernova, and The Times pop and rock critic Will Hodgkinson, and is chaired by Radio 2 head of music Jeff Smith.
The show, which will air on BBC Four and iPlayer on Thursday at 9.30pm, will feature live performances from a number of the nominees before the winner is announced.
The prize, which has been running since 1992 when it was won by Primal Scream’s Screamadelica, aims to champion the album format as well as new music in the UK and Ireland across an eclectic range of genres.
