CMAT headlines Sunday at End of the Road with songs requested via love letters and a message for Nigel Farage

If you don’t know, End of the Road has a team of posties who will deliver an anonymous letter to anyone on site for you. CMAT has been the recipient of many such letters over the years, this being her "favourite fucking festival ever" and all. This year set a record, though, as she explained during her main stage headline set Sunday night. She played a cover of “Jolene” by “the greatest woman to have ever walked the planet,” Dolly Parton, because someone requested it on a card shaped like a pair of giant breasts, she said.

She had covered the song last week, using it to open her Electric Picnic set in County Laois, Ireland. But the rendition was still seemingly so good that it concluded with her hyperbolically fainting, roused only by the opening bars of the next track. “Rent” was the other song she played that was requested via the secret postage system. CMAT has been taking requests on this current tour, playing the deep cut “I… Hate Who I Am When I'm Horny” last week in Belfast for the first time since 2023. But so far no other requests have arrived on a breast-shaped love letter.

Changing tact, CMAT introduced “I Wanna Be A Cowboy, Baby!” by explaining that the band's tour van was held up earlier today at Dover due to racist anti-immigration protestors. “I just want to say that I fucking hate those guys because they don’t understand anything about the world at all,” she said. “Compassion and love and community is the only thing that only fucking exists. So fuck Reform. Fuck Nigel. And Free Palestine. Let’s do something that really annoys them which is being joyous and carefree and let’s dance together.”

The set wasn’t totally smooth sailing. Two solo numbers were cut after the crowd called out for a medic and the entire band, including CMAT, took a hiatus from the stage. The band were meant to go off anyway as part of a recurring joke where CMAT berates them into leaving so she can play a few stripped-back songs. In actuality, she delivered a lot of love for her “Very Sexy CMAT Band”, with extended ad libbed introductions. Her guitarist, Jack Wolter — whom she calls the most End of the Road-coded man ever — played a set earlier today on the Garden stage with his band Cubzoa. And she jibed her violin player Holly Carpenter for wearing a Cymru shirt to impress Super Furry Animals, who played right before.

Later this month, CMAT heads to North America for a run of shows. Tonight was her final EU/UK festival date of the season.