jasmine.4.t on You Are the Morning

“I got long COVID when COVID came round, and I have ME, so it hit me really bad, I had to have a heart operation... I was just in bed for six months and I was like, I think I’m gonna transition.”

It’s a long road that’s brought singer-songwriter jasmine.4.t here, having just dropped the title track from her upcoming debut album You Are the Morning. Like previous single Elephant, which featured on BBC Sounds New Music Fix, and the record overall, the new release is a heart-warming endearment of T4T (trans-for-trans) friendship – something Jasmine found herself depending on after coming out.

“It went terribly," she tells us. "My marriage fell apart, I tried to move back in with my parents, and just watching them react to my transition was too much... I was sleeping on friends' floors, and that is when I wrote most of the songs.”

Jasmine had a lifelong passion for guitar since her late uncle had first gifted her the instrument, and she put together a scrapbook of love letters to the people that had put her up. But when the self-released album’s launch party fell through, the project was nearly abandoned. A friend motivated Jasmine to reconnect with an industry contact she had known pre-transition – Lucy Dacus. Jasmine sent Lucy a demo; she called Phoebe Bridgers, who called her manager.

After the most tense telephone tree imaginable, the news came through that Jasmine was the first UK signatory to Bridgers' Saddest Factory Records label, and was going to the legendary Sound City Studios in LA for a 12-day recording marathon – Jasmine was getting a new beginning, a long way away from sleeping on floors. “Me and my bandmates, Enid and Phoenix, who are both trans girls from Manchester, we all flew out together," Jasmine says. "We all knew the songs, but we were ready for them to be taken apart and put back together.”

Co-produced by all three members of supergroup boygenius, their influence is apparent across the record. Each of the three indie icons brought a distinct speciality; Julien Baker’s expertise on instruments, amps, and pedals gave the record its best electric guitar sounds, like on songs Skin On Skin and Breaking In Reverse, while Lucy Dacus took on an editorial role, making suggestions to lyrics and song structure.

“And Phoebe just has… boss guy energy,” Jasmine laughs. “But in the most nurturing way.” That boss guy energy is best heard on Guy Fawkes Tesco Dissociation, a bluesy duet that’s a highlight of the record. But as big a name as boygenius are, there was one more collaborator that barely fit into the recording booth – the Trans Chorus of Los Angeles (TCLA). Jasmine gushes over the historic magnitude of filling the place where Nirvana conceived Nevermind with trans artists, and the choir’s contributions to Elephant and album closer Woman amplify the album’s message of queer unity. “Looking back on the videos of that day, I didn’t know any of them at the time but we’ve kept in touch over Instagram and now I can pick out their faces!”

Engaging community projects like TCLA is something Jasmine is determined to do with her growing platform. When we saw her at Glasgow’s Queer Theory cabaret at Nice N Sleazy last November, she followed her set with a stall selling handmade friendship bracelets, with proceeds going to Trans Mutual Aid Manchester. She reveals she’d like to get back up to Scotland for her own shows in 2025 – but she’ll miss doing the intimate, community-oriented gigs on which she cut her teeth. “You know what we’re like, we love cabaret.”

Other resolutions for the new year include returning to the studio, spending time with her chosen family, and thinking up new ways to give back to Trans Mutual Aid, a grassroots support network that Jasmine could lean on when she faced precarious housing. “It helps people access therapy, access transition stuff, just any kind of financial support people need," she says. "But the main thing is housing.” Homelessness is a crisis queer people face on both sides of the Atlantic, but trans voices are growing in power. Jasmine has spent the lead-up to the album’s release recording more demos, and when she gets back stateside, she wants to tour and spread friendship bracelets and solidarity – even if there’s something worse in the White House this time: “People are ready to fight now.”

Her optimism is also welcome in the UK, where the Labour government has just indefinitely banned hormone blockers for trans patients under the age of 18. “I feel like 2024 was a year of mourning for us. 2025 should be a year of action. But, also a year to celebrate ourselves.” That celebration is You Are the Morning, a product of T4T friendship that seeks to pass on the love. Moving into the second half of the decade, jasmine.4.t sees a bright future, one that might already be too soon to change. “The tipping point happened and there’s nothing they can do to stop us.”

---

You Are the Morning is released on 17 Jan via Saddest Factory Records