The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station is a superbly petty title. It gives CMAT somewhere to start with an irrational dislike, then lets the embarrassment spread. A celebrity chef becomes a way into the less flattering things a person carries around. On EURO-COUNTRY, the small grievance is rarely as small as it first looks.
Released in August 2025, the Irish songwriter’s third album moves between private humiliations and the economic story that helped produce them. The title track deals with the Celtic Tiger and its aftermath: promised prosperity, empty houses, the damage left with the people who stayed. Ireland is a place people have to live in here, with all the awkward accounting that entails.
Louis Chilton, writing in The Independent, found the lyrics more distinctive than the arrangements. He singled out the self-examination of The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station and the country chorus of When a Good Man Cries, while questioning whether the music always matched the writing’s invention. An excellent premise can do a lot of work before anyone asks whether the song develops it.
CMAT’s humour is crucial to that personality. Anger, desire and shame arrive without anyone tidying up the mess first. She leaves her own pettiness visible while looking at much larger failures. The person doing the complaining is implicated too.
EURO-COUNTRY won the RTÉ Choice Music Prize for Irish Album of the Year in March 2026. The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station offers a less ceremonial introduction. CMAT starts with someone else being irritating and stays long enough to examine her own reaction. The joke works because she has left herself available for criticism too.