jasmine.4.t – “You Are The Morning”
We almost certainly won’t get a new boygenius album next year, but all three members of that supergroup did get together to produce an LP that’s coming out next month. Jasmine Cruickshank, the Manchester artist who records under the name jasmine.4.t recorded her full-length debut You Are The Morning at LA’s famed Sound City Studios, with Julien Baker, Lucy Dacus, and new label boss Phoebe Bridgers as producers and occasional bandmates. We’ve heard the early tracks “Skin On Skin” and “Elephant,” and now jasmine.4.t drops the new LP’s title track.
“You Are The Morning” is a delicate, glowing, genuinely lovely folk song. Here’s how jasmine.4.t explains it:
One of my oldest and closest friends, Han, supported me through my transition. She would put me up regularly when I had nowhere to stay. She helped me sort through the pain I had left behind then find the strength to fight for my life and the lives of those around me. This fight is urgent, as on Trans Day of Remembrance (20th November), we named 427 trans people who have died violently this year.
This song is about the healing found in queer friendship. It is about queer people’s resilience in the face of violence. It is about our potential to bring about change within ourselves, those around us, and the world at large. I think trans people in particular have an incredible ability to change this world. Of course, we are challenging norms of gender/sex. Beyond that, this year we have seen trans people dismantling violent machines of all forms to help manifest a bright future. This is what “you are the morning” has come to mean — it is an awakening to our power, and a call to action.
Matty Forrester and Spike Bee directed the video for “You Are The Morning,” and you can check it out below.
You Are The Morning is out 1/17 on Saddest Factory.