CMAT announces new album ‘Euro-Country’ with new single ‘Running/Planning’ and huge UK and European tour

CMAT has announced a new album and shared the uplifting single ‘Running/Planning’ – check out all the details below.

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The record, which is the follow up to her 2023 LP, ‘Crazymad, For Me‘, is set for release on August 29 and can pre-ordered/pre-saved here. The first taster for the LP, ‘Running/Planning’ has been shared today (March 25) and you can listen to it and view the video for the single below.

CMAT – real name Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson – has also announced a new set of UK/Ireland and European tour dates which include a show at the O2 Brixton Academy on October 2 and will wrap up at the 3Arena in Dublin on December 3.

Tickets go on general sale at 10am BST on April 4 for the UK dates and can be purchased here while fans can access pre-sale tickets by pre-ordering the new album before 5pm on April 1 here. Tickets for that go on sale at 10am the following day (April 2) here. Her European dates are on sale now here.

Speaking about her new single, CMAT said: “‘Running/Planning’ is about having to chase your own tail to be good enough to exist. It’s an abstracted view of societal pressure on women – specifically through a relationship lens: You start dating someone, you get engaged, you get married, you have kids etc etc etc… everything has to follow this linear pattern. (That’s the reason for the repetitive chorus!).

“And the minute you don’t follow that path, your mam starts giving out to you. That narrow path that everyone is supposed to be on… the minute you get outside of that, it gets incredibly stressful. And I don’t know anyone who is like, ‘Yeah, love this!'”

As for the album itself, CMAT described it as the “best thing I have ever made.”

She added: “I felt halfway through recording it was the most important record I’ve made for myself… mainly because it was making me go crazy.

“I’m always going to make the work I want to make, because there is a little gremlin in my head that tells me if it’s shit. More than success, there’s a bigger gremlin that wants me to make music that’s really good. She’s brutal and has ruined my life at times, but she is the keeper of my life and she’s always right.”

Speaking about the record recently to NME, the Irish singer-songwriter said: “There is lots and lots of new music and it’s coming very soon. I spent all of September to December working on it in a hole in New York City. It’s done now. I lost my mind there for a bit, but it sounds great,” she said.

“I’m really focusing on songs that transfer well to live music, because my live band is such an important part of what I do. They’re the basis of me becoming a well-known person in the UK who is able to sell tickets to gigs. I wouldn’t be able to do it if it wasn’t for my band, so I wrote an album for both them and me to slay.”

CMAT will play: 

JULY
12 – NOS, Lisbon
26 – Truck Festival, Oxfordshire
27 – Tramlines Festival, Sheffield

AUGUST
1 – Belladrum Tartan Heart, Belladrum
2 – All Together Now, Waterford
7 – Syd For Solen, Copenhagen
8 – Way Out West, Gothenburg
14 – Cabaret Vert, Charleville Mezieres
15 – Lowlands, Biddinghuizen
16 – Green Man Festival, Crickhowell

OCTOBER
2 – O2 Academy Brixton, London
4 – Academy, Manchester
5 – O2 Academy, Leeds 
6 – NX, Newcastle
9 – Barrowland Ballroom, Glasgow
12 – Rock City, Nottingham
13 – Corn Exchange, Cambridge
15 – Dome Concert Hall, Brighton
16 – O2 Institute, Birmingham
17 – UEA, Norwich, UK
19 – Octagon, Sheffield
20 – O2 Academy, Bristol

DECEMBER
5 – 3Arena, Dublin

Before that she will be supporting Sam Fender for a series of UK dates and she is due to play Glastonbury 2025 on Friday, June 27.

The post CMAT announces new album ‘Euro-Country’ with new single ‘Running/Planning’ and huge UK and European tour appeared first on NME.