Hear Me Out: ‘If My Wife New I’d Be Dead’ is still CMAT’s best album
After you fight your way through the sea of TikTok girlies dancing to ‘Take A Sexy Picture of Me’, you will find that CMAT‘s debut album remains her strongest lyrically and musically.
If My Wife New I’d Be Dead appears to have fallen between the cracks with CMAT’s swift rise to fame. Besides the two-step-theme tune ‘I Wanna Be a Cowboy, Baby!’ and the rage-fuelled lament ‘I Don’t Really Care For You’, fans have started to overlook the beautifully introspective album that drove us to love Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson in the first place.
With contributions from producer Oli Deakin, drummer Morgan Karabel and Rachel O’Regan on illustrations and visuals, recording for If My Wife New I’d Be Dead began in 2019, eventually spanning two years in London and Brooklyn-based studios, finally seeing light in 2022. The record was met with critical acclaim, topping the Irish charts and paving the way for her musical and performative style thereafter.
While new-release Euro-Country and 2023’s Crazymad, For Me are phenomenal records in their own right, there’s a reason why the latter was nominated for a Mercury Prize, still there’s something organic about If My Wife New I’d Be Dead. It offers CMAT’s original, rhinestoned Americana before her delve into the world of commercial-sounding pop destined for vertical video.
Put short, If My Wife New I’d Be Dead is the CMAT’s most honest record, both lyrically and to herself. In an interview with NME, Thompson said that she would never tailor her music to the radio. But her latest records feel as though they are doing just that, even if her Alex Turner-esque wit, poetic lyricism and raw emotion remain.
‘I’d Want You’, arguably the most poignant track on the album, was penned by Thompson at just 17 when she nursed a soft spot for the mid-2000s’ indie scene. But a range of luminaries shine through the record, not just those who founded indie sleaze. Besides wearing her heart on her sleeve, this self-described “sad country song of a woman” pays homage to numerous artists, including Dolly Parton and Kate Bush.
Opening with ‘Nashville’, a country track that yearns for a dust bowl revival, If My Wife New I’d Be Dead explores a spectrum of emotions, even those as confusing as the album’s grammatically complex name. Spanning themes such as isolation, heartbreak and self-image, the album functions as a sonic crutch for those attempting to navigate their 20s. ‘2 Wrecked 2 Care’ speaks of the all-too-familiar dependency on Diet Coke, while ‘Every Bottle (Is My Boyfriend)’ addresses hedonism as a means to forget.
On ‘Geography Teacher’, Thompson sings of self-deprecation, likening herself to a “let-down girl” who carries herself like “a delicatessen ham”, which she would later trade in for self-worth and acceptance on tracks from her latter albums like ‘Have Fun’ and ‘Take A Sexy Picture of Me’.
While fans at this summer’s festivals might scream and cry to CMAT’s later releases, there is an underlying truth to this debate, whether you like it or not: If My Wife New I’d Be Dead is Thompson’s only offering that is true to her origins, her ethos, and quintessential sound.
All things considered, without her debut, CMAT would not have projected into the limelight enough to experiment with different genres, meaning we would not have the cheeky, frivolous, no-fucks-given artist we have today, even if some of us die-hard fans do miss her banjo.
