FEATURE:
Spotlight
jasmine.4.t
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BACK in July…
as this article explained, “Manchester-based trans-singer-songwriter jasmine.4.t, also known as Jasmine Cruickshank, has inked a deal with Saddest Factory Records”. I wanted to spend time with this amazing and distinct artist. I am going to come to some interviews with her from last year. One that was published a few weeks ago. Before that, Rolling Stone UK included jasmine.4.t in their Ones to Watch 2025 feature (The Guardian also marked her as one to watch too). This is an exciting talent who will be on the scene for years:
“The story of how Manchester-based artist jasmine.4.t signed to Phoebe Bridgers’ Saddest Factory label reads like a dream, with Bridgers’ boygenius bandmate Lucy Dacus playing her the demos to debut album You Are the Morning in her car, and Bridgers being stunned. The finished album – recorded in LA with all of boygenius – is a striking statement of community and resilience from a special new voice, and, as she told us last year, “about love and community and joy in the face of all the shit”. (WR)”.
There are some great interviews with jasmine.4.t. Not only does she discuss her then-forthcoming album, You Are the Morning (released on 17th January); she also talks about coming out as trans and life as a role model in a country (the U.K.) where the trans community are not embraced as they should be. I am going to end with a review for You Are the Morning.
I am going to move to a couple of review. Let’s start out with a very recent chat with The Forty-Five. Talking about You Are the Morning; resilience, community and music as catharsis, it is a revealing and illuminating interview with an artist who has been tipped for big things this year:
“As the first UK artist to sign to Phoebe Bridgers’ Saddest Factory label, Manchester-based jasmine.4.t is already keeping top tier company; with her imminent debut album – this month’s raw and resilient ‘You Are The Morning’ – produced not only by Phoebs but the whole of boygenius, the singer has essentially earned herself the golden ticket in the indie lottery. Documenting the years following her transition with a deft and fragile touch that’s diaristic yet generous and empathetic, however, it’s easy to see why the trio have taken Jasmine to their hearts: these are songs that show their open wounds but find solace in community and chosen family, a lesson for us all to live by.
Having recorded in LA with Phoebe, Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker, Jasmine talks us through the turbulent process of reaching her debut and her hopes for inspiring and showing up for the next generation of trans people.
Is writing how you’ve always processed life?
When I was in the closet, I found it so hard to write. Being true to yourself and being connected to your emotions is so important, so when you’re pretending to be a different gender and trying to bottle up everything it’s obviously just impossible. My first EP was written from 2014 onwards and was all pre-transition stuff about the relationship that was to become my [ex-]marriage and some of the troubling behaviours that were already showing in that. There’s a song on my debut EP that we renamed ‘Shoes’ and then re-recorded a version of it as ‘New Shoes’ for this record. It was a lot.
Did you want to reclaim something by reworking that track?
When Lucy suggested re-recording it, I was immediately like, ‘No, it’ll be way too painful’. But it’s a song about starting a family and wanting to do that in spite of exhaustion and being broken, so singing it in this environment with my trans-femme bandmates who came to LA from Manchester with me, I thought it could be about chosen family. When we started recording it I was finding it so painful and I couldn’t stop crying for long enough to record a full vocal take. There’s one take where I got most of the way through that we used, and at the end of it you can hear Julien and Lucy and Phoebe all coming in to hold me and comfort me.
In the album, amongst the fear and the pain there’s a real highlighting of the positive and beautiful parts of being trans too – was that a balance you were aware of maintaining?
I feel a lot of responsibility now that I have landed on my feet in this way with my life and my career; I want to be a visible trans role model in music and also to show that things get better, because they do. That’s what ‘You Are The Morning’ means – it’s about the resilience of trans people, the incredible solidarity we have and how, if we all pull together, I think we’ll be a huge part of history and bringing about a brighter future. As trans people, we’ve gone through so much that we’re kind of like antennas to all the horrible shit going on and we want to do as much as we can to change things. We’re on the frontline and that’s fucking cool to see.
PHOTO CREDIT: Matt Grubb
Sonically, the record is just as raw and, as you’ve mentioned, has the unpolished, human bits left in. How did you approach that?
We didn’t have much time! We had 14 days to record the whole album. But on top of that, I just like music that’s very honest. I’m a big fan of Elliott Smith and Iron and Wine, and Phoebe is as well, so I think we both just wanted to make something raw and something that was real and emotionally connected to ourselves. The sounds are very different to how it would have ended up if I’d have just been doing it myself; I have no idea how Julien makes those guitar sounds. We just wanted to tell an honest story because we knew it would resonate with so many people.
You’ve toured with Lucy before and spoken about becoming proper friends. Does that mean that doing the record with boygenius felt normal or was there still a bit of ‘Oh shit!’ to it all?!
I mean, I wasn’t NOT like that! There were definitely moments where I’d be like, ‘What the fuck is my life?!’ They’re just so fucking funny – as individuals but especially as a group they’re just hilarious. They’re so loudly themselves and I love them all so much. There were definitely moments when I was driving them all to the studio when I’d be like… fuck. Primarily they’re my friends but also they are Gods to me.
Does it feel like the music industry in general is starting to feel like a more inclusive place?
We need more trans role models and I think it does come at a cost – we’re a long way from trans people being able to have a nice, comfortable experience in the music industry; touring especially is fucking terrifying. Venues need to have a safe place for artists to get changed and have to ourselves; I’ve had to get changed in a toilet so many times, which feels very unsafe. And also not tokenising us – it’s so common to be the one queer artist and if it’s a trans woman, she’ll probably not be having a great night. But I think it’s amazing how much more representation we’re getting. It’s not there but it’s definitely a step in the right direction”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Matt Grubb
There are two more interviews that I will include. The first of the two is from Rolling Stone UK. jasmine.4.t reflected on her debut L.P. and how she builds a trans-led community. An album that tells stories of triumph and resilience. If this artist is not in your life then do make sure you correct that straight away:
“They were in the car together one day and Lucy played the track,” Jasmine remembers Dacus telling her. “I got a text from Lucy saying, ‘Oh my god Phoebe’s heard the tracks and she’s gonna sign you!’” In lightning-fast time, Bridgers then gushed over her love of the songs on a Zoom call and Jasmine.4.t became the first British artist signed to Saddest Factory.
Her debut album You Are the Morning, recorded in Los Angeles with boygenius, is a candid and beautiful indie rock record about life as a trans woman, and the communities forged against systemic hate and oppression. Lead single ‘Skin on Skin’ tells the story of Jasmine’s first trans love, and she performs live with a band made up entirely of trans women.
“I’m surrounded by so many creative people, and every single queer person in my circle is creative,” she says. “Everyone is so in love with each other’s art.”
What was happening in your life when you wrote the songs that end up on the album?
My first EP came out pre-transition, and then I got really sick during COVID and transitioned while having long COVID. I left an abusive marriage and was homeless for a period after I wasn’t accepted by my family. From there, I found this incredibly community up here in Manchester. My first show up here was a fundraiser for my friend’s top surgery, and I was going to DIY release my demos, but then it all happened…
What did writing songs do for you in this period?
It’s always been therapeutic for me. If people want me to sing in front of them then I will! Since transitioning and experiencing life as a trans woman, and [because of] how much the world sucks for trans women, it made me a lot more driven to put myself out there and represent us and be vocal about how shit things are for us in terms of systemic transphobia and street violence. I have a song about that on the record.
Tell us about recording in Los Angeles with boygenius…
Everyone had such a shared goal in mind, and we were like bouncing ideas off each other and such an exciting and creative and respectful way. It was so fun and how I want to live my life forever, in this wonderful, creative space with these incredibly, incredibly talented musicians. The record ended up very different to how I would have done it, but I love it so much for what it is. I love the record, I listened to it in my car! It’s embarrassing!
What’s the overarching story of the album?
It’s about a new beginning. I don’t mean just my transition, but it’s wishing for a peaceful future for trans women. The record’s called You Are the Morning, and the title track is about queer friendships. It’s about love and community and joy in the face of all the shit.
Is visibility the most important part of what you want to represent as an artist?
Given how many talented trans women there are, there are so few that are publicly known and visible as artists. I take that quite seriously in terms of visibility, but also trying to trying to affect change using my platform. I think visibility without protection is a trap and it puts people in danger – if people are like, ‘Oh, look at this horrible trans woman’. We don’t have political action to try and protect us and to try and fight for our rights, because they’re going to be fighting against our rights. I’m fighting for trans visibility and antifascist action”.
Although it is a very long and detailed interview, I am not including everything from The Line of Best Fit. jasmine.4.t’s words about her debut album and its creation. She also discusses the trans community that healed her to working with boygenius in L.A. It is a terrific interview. This is someone with a big future in music that is going to inspire and give strength to so many people:
“It’s in this warm and blossoming world that much of jasmine.4.t’s debut album You Are The Morning exists, bathed in a glow of candy-coloured joy and catharsis. The brainchild of Bristol-born and Manchester-based trans artist Jasmine Cruickshank, it’s an album that looks for meaning first and foremost in love – love for her friends, love for her personal journey, and for an intimacy that had once felt so far out of reach.
When the other reality of being a trans woman in our increasingly radicalised society does intrude, it creeps in softly, makes its sober point, and fades into the wallpaper of You Are The Morning’s house of rosy devotion. That’s not to say that the stakes are low. In centering her own hangups – and her tender heartbreaks, too – Cruickshank counterweighs her multilayered reveries with a dose of kitchen sink realism (one is literally called “Kitchen”) that keeps them from drifting into the ether like castles in the air.
Look for jasmine.4.t on streaming platforms and you’ll find just a handful of songs predating You Are The Morning – mostly from her 2019 EP Worn Through – but there’s a lot more out there under various guises, including whole albums that we’ll likely never hear, recorded on the cheap and sold in Bristol coffee shops on self-burned CD-Rs. Few things are ever entirely lost, though; she was bemused by meeting someone recently who had a copy of an album of Daniel Johnston covers she recorded at 16. She’s twice that age now, and finally at peace with who she’d always yearned to be.
The first time Cruickshank tried to come out as trans, she was an academic teen about to leave Bristol to take up a bachelor’s degree in maths at Oxford University. “It… didn’t go very well,” she says. “Oxford fucking sucks and is super transphobic as well. I really hated it there.” Forced to squirm reluctantly back into the closet to survive, her mental and physical health collapsed from the stress. A severe case of myalgic encephalomyelitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome or ME, followed and she was left with no choice but to quit and go home, where she lived in the basement of her parents’ house while working as temp staff for the NHS.
In 2016, she co-founded a punk, folk and indie label, the still-going-strong Breakfast Records, with friends Josh Jarman and Dan Anthony of west country Americana band Langkamer, through which she released Worn Through and other music with early bands Human Bones and The Gnarwhals. She got married, too, to someone she’d met while at Oxford, but the key in her chest still sat there, burning silently away. When the pandemic hit in 2020, she was knocked flat, ending up practically bedbound with long Covid (a close relative of ME) for almost half a year. It was there, during the long hours of unhappily staring at the ceiling, that she made the decision to try and transition again.
“It went just as badly as it did the first time,” she says with a hollow laugh, shaking her head of blue and bright pink hair. “My marriage fell apart. Then I tried to move back in with parents and that went terribly. I was very traumatised by the whole experience and had really bad PTSD symptoms.”
Shellshocked and broken, she left Bristol for Manchester, where kind friends offered sofas and long talks over steaming cups of tea. It’s to those friends, and the wider trans and queer communities of Manchester and beyond, that You Are The Morning is dedicated. Even before she played her first show as jasmine.4.t, “at a fundraiser for an incredible trans guy’s top surgery,” Cruickshank had around 30 songs written and demoed, capturing all the new sensations, superheated feelings, and heart-pounding crushes of the early months of her transition.
PHOTO CREDIT: Matt Grubb
An essential part of any new moon party is to set your intentions for the coming month(s), and intentions are something that Cruickshank says she takes quite seriously. As someone who has long been involved in grassroots activism and advocacy, particularly with Trans Mutual Aid Manchester, there was a worry that people in her community might feel like she was leaving them behind as her star began to rise. “I don’t ever want to not be paying my dues to my community at home,” she explains. “So my intentions were very much about making sure that this record was made in a way that could benefit the wider trans and queer community that has supported me up to this point. And I feel like we’ve stayed true to that.”
As well as working out ways in which the record release and merch sales could support Trans Mutual Aid Manchester, You Are The Morning features the Trans Chorus of LA – the first of its kind in America – who joined the Sound City sessions for the album’s closing choral piece. Arranged by Phoenix Rousiamanis, whose composing credits include the London Philharmonic Orchestra and trans opera Songs of Descent(“mind-blowing, literally phenomenal”), it begins in the closing minute of the terrific single “Elephant”, continues through the interlude “Transition”, and concludes with the spine-tingling affirmation of “Woman”, the first song written and released as jasmine.4.t.
“We were recording in Studio B, which is what we call the Punisher studio [after Bridgers’ second album], but it wasn’t available on the day that the Chorus was coming in,” she explains. “So we recorded them in Studio A instead, which is this massive, iconic live room that Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours and Nirvana’s Nevermind were recorded in. Thirty trans people in that historic room together? That had never happened before, clearly. Fucking hell. What a thing to be a part of. I feel so grateful to them. To hear that space filled with solely trans voices was a really incredible moment, and I think we all felt that. I have a video where I’m filming them and then pan around to Lucy Dacus next to me, and she’s just welling up.”
In fulfilling her own potential, Cruickshank says she’s often surprised by the depth of feeling her music seems to have stirred up. “I’ve been so overwhelmed with messages and comments from trans women and other queer people expressing gratitude and I’m a bit like, ‘Why are you grateful? I’m the one who’s reaping here,’” she says. “I didn’t expect that, because I’m just starting out here, but it’s so wonderful to know that my being a visible trans woman in the music industry has meant a lot to a lot of people already. It’s wonderful to wake up to all this wholesome shit in my Instagram notifications. I do get a lot of hate as well, but it’s massively outweighed by the amount of love.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Matt Grubb
According to statistics gathered by Trans Day of Remembrance organisers, the past 10 years have seen more than 3800 trans people worldwide reported dead, with violence and suicide the two most common causes. That’s more than one trans person every day, and the increasingly fascist-leaning anti-trans rhetoric of the political class isn’t exactly inspiring confidence in brighter days ahead. It’s no wonder that other trans women and queer people are latching onto the jasmine.4.t vision of radical softness and unbending solidarity. Of being our own lights – and each other’s – in the face of loud injustice.
When the noise of negativity gets too much for Cruickshank to bear, she’s grateful for her chosen family like Han and another close friend Yulia, who will step in during the periodic pile-ons she endures to block, report, and delete if needed, to protect her from the worst. With the album coming out shortly, her excitement is mixed with some nervousness too. “I want it to go well but I’m still a bit on edge about the hatefulness that might come my way,” she says.
“However many lovely messages you get, the evil ones do stick in your head. Especially with what’s happening in America right now, it’s a fucking high stakes situation being a trans woman. So I need to be brave. It’s so important to not back down and to be visible and be fighting for trans rights and every other fucking thing that we need to be fighting for right now. It’s a long list.”
As well as producing, playing, and singing backing vocals, each member of boygenius gets their own star turn on the album, with “Guy Fawkes Tesco Dissociation” being Phoebe Bridgers’ moment, and it’s perfect for her breathy, deadpan warmth. Julien Baker blesses “Tall Girl” with her soft soprano, while Lucy Dacus adds some extra oomph to the moving and brilliant “New Shoes”, which Cruickshank originally recorded pre-transition for Worn Through.
It was actually Dacus who coaxed her into revisiting the song and bringing it into the benevolent world of You Are The Morning. The only hesitation was that she had originally written the song about her ex-spouse, early on in their relationship. “Recording it again after the divorce, with my chosen family singing ‘Let’s make a family,’ was both devastating and incredibly affirming of this new and joyful road that I’m on,” she says, her voice cracking slightly with emotion. She shakes her head. “Yeah, it was a lot.”
If you follow any trans advocacy accounts on social media, you might be familiar with a quote by non-binary trans writer Kai Cheng Thom that goes “Those who have survived the unthinkable are also those who know how to create a better world – because it’s ended for us before," and I think part of the blueprint for that world lies in You Are The Morning. Through confidently expressing her unbroken self, insecurities and all, Cruickshank is remade once again into a source of light and strength for us all.
“There has been turmoil, but it’s been beautiful too,” she says, summing up. “I feel like I’ve landed on my feet and it’s really getting emotional now. I wrote these songs at the worst possible time, when everything had gone to shit and no one was accepting me for who I was, so it’s been amazing to see other trans women getting hope from my journey and from this incredibly lucky life that I’m now living.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” she adds, grimacing. “It fucking sucks being a trans woman in the fascist state of the UK, but I have my incredible chosen family around me and I’m so, so happy”.
I am going to end with this review from last year. Even though there is not a lot of online material from jasmine.4.t online – I am writing this on 11th January -, what we do have available is sensational. Personal songs with kitchen sink realism, there is also this aroma of perfume and, as The Line of Best Fit wrote “candy-coloured joy and catharsis”:
“It’s not even out until January, but I’m calling it already: this thing of beauty will be one of 2025’s finest. Based in Manchester, Jasmine Cruickshank, who writes and records as Jasmine.4.t , makes music that disarms through its intimacy and hopeful, wistful intensity.
Produced by Boygenius, it shares sonic DNA with early Perfume Genius, Boygenius’ own Lucy Dacus, and Elliott Smith. It’s bedroom pop, but even more fully-formed. Her lyrics tackle looking for love when all seems lost, celebrating her trans identity, and moving forward in a new location.
Where ‘Elephant ‘ is zesty dream pop, ‘Roan’ and ‘Skin On Skin’ ache with desire. ‘Tall Girl’ flirts with a breezy, grungy country style, and the brilliantly titled ‘Guy Fawkes Tesco Dissociation ‘ is a mantra to existential despair in the frozen food aisles. We’ve all been there. The title track, underpinned by swooning strings and delicate finger picking, tackles the dizzying heights of new love.
Her soft, lovely vocals are sure to bring comfort and reassurance to the cold new year. These are vignettes that feel profound, finding beauty in unexpected places . All hail a unique new talent, enveloping us in the warm embrace of her songs”.
I am new to the music of jasmine.4.t but I am already intrigued and invested. An artist that you will be hearing a lot from through 2025, do go and follow her and listen to You Are the Morning. One of the most important debut albums of this year. We have in our midst…
A stunning artist with a long future ahead.
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