It always bears repeating: for queer people, community is everything. Manchester-based artist Jasmine Cruickshank (aka jasmine.4.t) can attest to this; for her, fellow queer people represent “a fresh start, new days which are beautiful and cosmic”. After coming out as trans in 2021, she found herself experiencing homelessness as she moved from Bristol to Manchester. Thanks to friends and the local queer community, she was able to drift from sofa to sofa as she rebuilt her life. Years later, she has found a place in another community, namely amongst boygenius members Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, and Julien Baker as the first UK signee on Phoebe Bridgers’ Saddest Factory label.
This new community wraps itself up in Cruickshank’s music, and likewise she wraps herself up in it too. Enjoying the spoils of 12 recording days at Sound City Studios in LA, jasmine.4.t’s debut album You Are The Morning is coyly flush with fancy touches, from vocal contributions from the members of boygenius (who also produce the record) to a full choir to sweeping strings. On “Best Friend’s House” the camaraderie is condensed to a short and simple acoustic jangle that rings out as an ode to finding safe spaces in chosen family. Complete with a clan of backing vocalists (including her producers as well as labelmate Claud, Becca Mancari, and E.R. Fightmaster), together they boost Cruickshank’s call of wanting to be “In my best friend’s bed / With the curtains closed / And nothing in my head.”
Elsewhere, Cruickshank lets the talents of her friends sidle right up alongside her and her band (which is also made up of other trans musicians, including Phoenix Rousiamanis on piano and strings, Eden O’Brien on drums, and Emily Abbott on bass). Bridgers trades lines with Cruickshank on the cathartic country-inflected rocker “Guy Fawkes Tesco Dissociation” and Baker adds in itchy guitar solos on “Skin on Skin”, leaning Cruickshank towards their own indie rock style. While this allows Cruickshank to work with a bigger canvas (see the crescendo of purgative noise at the end of “Elephant”), her own intimacy isn’t erased completely. The folksy opening track “Kitchen” is intimate like a Sufjan Stevens or Elliot Smith track, every note of Cruickshank’s fingerpicked acoustic guitar crisp and clear as she sings with a dazzle of new love in her eyes (“Who even made you this way?”, she sings with an enraptured stare). “New Shoes”, an older track that was written for her ex-spouse, asks for changes (“I need new shoes / These are worn through”) before we hear her quietly crying in the song’s outro.
Close, candid, and unwavering personal moments like this are the heart of the album. Sometimes they don’t always hit as hard or well as they should: vocoder-tinged piano ballad “Roan” is wonderfully poetic in its final moments (“Unhealed tattoos / Soft hips, soft lips / Incantations / Between the carpet and your claws / And the caws between sleeps”), but it mostly drifts by without note; “Highfield” fully dips into a pool of dreamy strings and feels like a luxuriant distracted aside from everything else here; and “Tall Girl” has Cruickshank trying on an art rock swagger akin to the Zolas, and despite its brevity, feels like an ill-fitting jumper.
This is to be expected, not just from a debut, but a first album where a former DIY artist is suddenly given support and expense that most others would dream of. It’s deserved, of course. At her best Cruickshank has a lyrical prowess and devastating intimacy that thrives with good production. Her 2019 Worn Through EP had a more homely edge to it, which is all but gone on You Are The Morning. It would have been easy for songs to have come out overwrought and overproduced here, but instead we have a record of community, of gathering friends around to sing, play with, and support you.
This is a record of coming to terms with a new reality; a document of change; a manifest of acceptance; a diary of new and exciting love; a testament of community and friendship; a journey of new love and finding peace. On the final track “Woman”, Cruickshank is joined by the Trans Chorus of Los Angeles, who reaffirm her peaceful assertion: “Cause I know who I am / And I understand / That I am in my soul a woman.” You Are The Morning takes us through highs and lows, smooth and bumpy patches, and lays the inner turmoil and pain out for us to see plainly. That it ends on a close knit and undramatic moment of true acceptance is that hallway light that stays on for those who need to hear it – including Cruickshank herself. Knowing oneself through and through is the first step, for then you know your community.
