Messed!Up
The second day at the Way Out West Festival was the least interesting day for me, but if you’d ask our hip hop photographer, he would probably have a different opinion. I only had two bands/artists on the schedule – but they delivered amazing shows.
Three years ago, I strolled around the festival area at the Roskilde Festival, sipping on a cava drink, when I heard an amazing voice singing something about Jamie Oliver (“The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station”).That was the first time I ever bumped into CMAT.
CMAT is the abbreviation for Irish countrypop star Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, who came crashing into the scene after the pandemic with unabashed confidence, cracking jokes, and dealing with issues like fatshaming by undressing on stage (just half-naked) and waving her butt to the audience – and it’s hilarious fun. She’s coating her amazing songs in loads of fun on stage, and although it was my fifth CMAT show in three years, I think I had my best experience. I was a bit annoyed at first as she was put on the smallest stage of the festival – she played in front of 20 000 people at Primavera Sound last year, and at WOW it was impossible to fit in more than a 1000 people – but then I realized that I got the chance to finally get closer to stage for the first time. Don’t get me wrong, she deserves a much bigger stage, and is used to bigger stages today, but personally, I was happy to catch her on a small stage before she blows up to the arena level (believe, it’s not far off). And what a show it was!
It was a cabaret-clad performance where she blends humor, political consciousness, emotional depth, and raw energy – and she had her old fans in a tight grip while reaching out to new ones. It was buttshakes, weird dances, laying on the stage and eating snacks from the floor, and wrapping it up by running out in the audience during the last song. It was so much happening during her show that can’t remember what I watched yesterday because if I put all the bands together from the first festival day – ALL – they couldn’t deliver their songs with even a fragment of CMAT’s energy. This is one of the top shows during this festival season.
Many of my friends asked for one recommendation today, and I mentioned CMAT to everyone, and no one had ever heard of her before. Well, she got herself at least ten new fans, only among my peeps.
After the show, I had a few hours to kill before Wet Leg were about to play, and for onc,e I took some time off with old friends and had a beer. You don’t need to work 150% the whole festival. If there’s nothing on the schedule, there’s nothing to do.
Wet Leg is probably the talk of the summer. Whatever festival I’ve been to this summer, Wet Leg have been there and filled the stages wherever they have played. 2025 is probably the year the band had a massive commercial breakthrough, and it was a very smart move to release the second album Moisturizer during the festival season and get those songs out to an audience directly. Frontlady Rhian Teasdale is also an amazing performer, flexing her muscles and super fit body during the whole show, and it attracts people of all kinds (even the misogynists next to me that got pushed out by a group of ladies who had enogh; I was applauding). What’s new from the first time I saw the band a few years ago is that, today, they’re a tight five-piece, delivering hard-edged riffs with irresistible flair. It’s big riffs and punchy drums on repeat, and I don’t need more than that.
After they’d punched the last drumbeat, I was too tired to stay. Last night’s lack of sleep had taken its toll, and I left to catch up with sleep.
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Photographer: Richard Bloom (CMAT)
Photographer: Björn Vallin (Wet Leg)
