“Can’t help but feel we’re playing in front of a home crowd” says CMAT, the pop star moniker of Irish singer Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, in front of New York’s sold out Brooklyn Paramount audience.

Though CMAT herself hails from Dunboyne, County Meath in Ireland, she recorded the massively successful recent release “EURO-COUNTRY” “not far” from the Paramount’s home in Downtown Brooklyn. She tells the audience about how she would Citi Bike around the neighborhood from the studio, and how long it took her to realize she was, in fact, still paying for that Citi Bike membership.

She tells the audience quite a bit: for such a large concert (double the size of her last stint in New York only a year ago), and even larger on stage presence, the show still feels intimate. CMAT takes a moment to sing happy birthday to a young fan at the barricade. She regales fans with behind the scenes secrets of recording some of their favorite songs: turns out, the hooting and hollering in the background of “When A Good Man Cries” includes an operatic take on “yup, Ariana!,” an Irish meme that’s circulated Dublin Facebook and WhatsApp chats for years. 

She plays a careful balance: though her onstage persona is unapologetic, bold, and lightning-bright, the songs themselves are a raw, honest, and emotional contrast. Tracks like “Take A Sexy Picture of Me,” “EURO-COUNTRY” and “Running/Planning” deal with fears of adequacy, beauty standards, the Celtic Tiger, identity, religion, schoolgirl fantasies of love and their adult realities. She plays through them in a whirlwind of red hair and fringe and purple tights, belting vocals and self-assured attitude. And while the undercurrent of fear thrums throughout the lyrics, her confidence in performing them removes the shame, and allows audiences to truly connect.

It’s something that hits home for the crowd, if their completely acapella version of the second verse of “Take A Sexy Picture of Me” is anything to go by. Or their CMAT embellished sunglasses and Dunboyne Diana jerseys, their fervor in the chorus of “Jamie Oliver Petrol Station,” their waving Irish flags and cheers of “yup, CMAT!” 

Towards the end of the set, CMAT launches into fan-fave “I Wanna Be A Cowboy, Baby” by instructing the crowd on the “Dunboyne County Meath Two-Step,” a country-inspired line dance that has the entire sold out show shuffling left to right in sync. Not many can make New Yorkers line dance, but CMAT does it with ease. Perhaps because that’s simply the fanbase she’d built (or as she says “the community we’ve made doing stupid shit like line dancing”): a warm, open, and accepting one.