CMATMain Stage, Electric Picnic★★★★★ CMAT opens her blockbuster Electric Picnic set on Saturday night with a rousing rendition of Jolene, in tribute to the late Dolly Parton.There are parallels between the two artists, both of them brilliant, bold and unbridled in their ambition.For the Irish singer this is a homecoming that nearly didn’t happen, as gastroenteritis forced her to cancel her appearance yesterday at the Rock en Seine festival, on the edge of Paris.But, two years after she took Electric Arena, the Stradbally festival’s second stage, by storm, the importance to Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson of returning to headline Electric Picnic is clear.She may have performed on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury in 2025 – not to mention picking up the best-album award at this year’s Ivor Novello Awards – but tonight is the “most important gig I have ever played at, because it’s really magical to know my home understands me the best”.She then plays a blistering version of the album’s title track, Euro-Country, about the bleakness of the 2008 crash – “All the big boys, all the Berties, all the envelopes, yeah they hurt me” – and her hope that the younger generation will make better choices.It’s a masterly performance, balancing technical skill with raw emotion. It’s also undeniably moving.There’s another reason Electric Picnic means so much to CMAT: “EP is the first festival I ever went to, and clearly it got me hooked on the idea that I would go to every festival ever as my part of my f**king job,” she tells the crowd.They make their appreciation clear with their overwhelming “Dunboyne Diana” callback as she sings When a Good Man Cries – a song the US pop star Olivia Rodrigo covered on her recent appearance in BBC Radio 1’s Live Lounge.Fittingly, CMAT gets the audience to do her “Dunboyne two-step” to I Wanna Be a Cowboy, Baby!, her breakout hit, as well as the “woke Macarena”, as she calls the routine that accompanies her TikTok-friendly single Take a Sexy Picture of Me.With a dazzling set that prompts both laughter and tears among a crowd that she was herself a member of not so long ago, CMAT is an artist who’s clearly at the height of her powers.