On her debut album You Are the Morning, Mancunian singer-songwriter jasmine.4.t makes a name for herself – with a little help from her friends.
As the first British artist to be signed to Saddest Factory Records, the record label founded by indie superstar Phoebe Bridgers, Jasmine Cruickshank is ushering in a new chapter for 2020s folk-rock. Dynamic, layered, and utterly gorgeous, You Are The Morning is a natural addition to Saddest Factory’s carefully-constructed musical universe.
Fundamentally, You Are the Morning is an album about love. Jasmine, a trans woman who has been open about her experiences with family upheaval, homelessness, and PTSD, uses the songs on this album to document the process of re-learning how to love and be loved in the wake of past pain and trauma.
The opening track, ‘Kitchen’, captures this perfectly. Over a softly finger-picked guitar pattern, Jasmine basks in the comfort of a mundane morning spent with a loved one, utterly awed that someone could care for her the way she cares for them.
“How could you love this broken girl full of love with no capacity for romance? / Why do you want me around when all I can do is stand in your kitchen?”
But romance is not the only thing living at the core of this album. You Are The Morning is, in Jasmine’s words, a record dedicated to the queer friendships that saved her life. ‘Best Friend’s House’, for example, is a short but wonderfully sweet tune about feeling at home and safe in the presence of your loved ones. She is joined by a chorus of friends, including the members of her all trans-band, label-mates boygenius and Claud, and Becca Mancari and E.R. Fightmaster. With its simple lyrics and jubilant melody, this number would make the perfect campfire song (and will undoubtedly make a killing at live shows).
Despite the number of pure, warm-and-fuzzy love songs on this record, Jasmine doesn’t shy away from her raw edges. ‘Guy Fawkes Tesco Dissociation’, undoubtedly the record’s darkest track, is a standout amongst its companions for showing off Jasmine’s storytelling talents. The song is a haunting country-rock duet between Jasmine and an alternate version of herself, voiced by none other than Phoebe Bridgers. It recounts the narrator’s memory in flashes: Bonfire Night celebrations across the street, the freezer aisle at Tesco, the refrigerator in her own kitchen. In between those moments, though, she helplessly watches as a stranger wears her body as a costume, posing as her to her loved ones – a sentiment likely familiar to those who have struggled with dissociation as a result of mental illness, trauma, or emotional distress. Jasmine captures the unique terror of this experience not only through her lyrics, but through her vocal delivery, which builds over time from a quiet, creeping falsetto to guttural yelps.
The final two tracks on this album are the most spellbinding. In “Transition”, an otherworldly arrangement featuring the Trans Chorus of Los Angeles, wordless vocalizations overlap and eventually converge as they bleed into “Woman”, a triumphant declaration of womanhood and identity that is sure to give listeners chills five times over. Soft yet self-assured, the song is a rebuttal to those who question or doubt her sense of self:
“I know who I am / and I understand that I am, in my soul, a woman.”
Hungry fans of boygenius will be excited to know that Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker, and Lucy Dacus have their fingerprints all over this record. All three of them make multiple appearances on the backing vocals, and as the album’s producers, they bring each song to life with subtle layers of strings, keys, harmonies, and muted drums. Jasmine herself has definitely attended the boygenius school of tortured, melodic indie rock; though her songs are lyrics-focused and grounded in conventionally pretty chords, she is unafraid to go slightly off-kilter. She prefers raw, in-your-face vocal takes and doesn’t mind decorating her more mellow songs with the occasional ripping guitar solo.
Still, Jasmine doesn’t need to work too hard to set herself apart from the works of boygenius and her other contemporaries. With her soft, full voice and incredibly potent songwriting, she is a creative force to be reckoned with. Certainly an artist to watch in 2025, jasmine.4.t is dragging us away from the tired “sad girl” trope and giving modern folk-rock a fresh perspective full of trans joy, queer love, and raw, unfiltered beauty.
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