Gender and genre worlds collide in Manchester.
This is a brave record. In the video for the single ‘Elephant’ there are repeating clips of Jasmine playing an acoustic in her bedroom. It is not hard to imagine that all the songs on ‘You Are the Morning’ started out from various Manchester bedrooms. The brave bit was to share such personal reflections with the world.
Jasmine.4.t is a trans songwriter who sings about the tangled joy, heartache, friendship and isolation of transfeminine life. Based in Manchester, Jasmine became the first UK artist to sign for Phoebe Bridgers’ Saddest Factory Records. Jasmine and her band got to travel to L.A. to record at Sound City Studios. The result: a wonderfully uplifting album that should be appreciated by anyone who owns a heart and with an ear for a good tune.
The album’s sparse tracks still sound like bedsit streams of consciousness, such as ‘Kitchen’, ‘Highfield’, ‘You Are the Morning’, ‘New Shoes’ and ‘Roan’: albeit with a few strings, accordion or piano from the magnificently named Phoenix Rousiamanis. There are some pretty hot supporting musicians on this record although it doesn’t always work and it’s not always a comfortable listen – ‘Best Friend’s House’ is not great. But the upbeat band tracks wouldn’t sound out of place blaring out from some Northern Quarter venue. ‘Skin on Skin’ is deliciously and quite positively erotic, with great drumming from Eden O’Brian. ‘Breaking in Reverse’ is tremendously catchy and ‘Guy Fawkes Tesco Dissociation’ as a song title, and as a tune just works, as does Bridgers’ backing vocals. The Trans chorus of Los Angeles aren’t too shabby a backup for the album’s last three tracks, ‘Elephant’, ‘Transition’ and ‘Woman’.
For jasmine.4.t activism and performance are closely linked. Jasmine’s lyrics go from the dark to the light, exuding confidence at times or self-doubt, but with the overall, unwavering commitment to knowing who she is. Jasmine Cruikshank sings “I am, in my soul, a woman“. A courageous and talented woman.
