The two musicians who shaped jasmine.4.t: “My dad borrowed all his CDs”
While her career has only begun to take off in the last couple of years, especially following the release of her debut album, You Are The Morning, Jasmine Cruickshank has become one of the most talked-about artists currently operating in the UK. Her band, which shares her stage name of jasmine.4.t, have employed an exemplary blend of indie folk, slacker rock and alt-country with a huge amount of force and powerful lyricism about gender identity, queer love, and political rebellion, and the importance of these topics is something that cannot be overstated in today’s society.
However, she hasn’t just appeared in the limelight out of thin air, and while people are only beginning to notice her brilliance now, she’s actually been operating on the indie scene for many years under various guises and in multiple projects, dating back before her transition that began in 2021. Having helped co-found Bristol indie label Breakfast Records, she would eventually find herself relocating to Manchester, where the project began to gain traction.
Impressively, her album was produced by the members of Boygenius, which suggests there is more than an overlap in sound and a certain pool of influence stemming from this style of songwriting. However, given her lengthy periods in other projects dabbling with other genres, there are many more layers to her songwriting approach that come from long before Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker, and her close friend Lucy Dacus emerged onto the scene.
Having begun learning guitar from a young age after her late uncle passed his guitar to her, and she didn’t waste any time in jumping straight to the works of axe greats such as Jimi Hendrix, though there are little signs of his style having rubbed off on her current works. There are moments where his technical proficiency does shine through in Jasmine’s playing, but for the most part, her style has been shaped in a more considerable way by other acts from different realms.
Her artistic origins playing in grunge and punk acts may have shaped her slightly more, but there were two artists in particular with whom she felt a special connection and shares stark similarities in how confessional and raw their songs are. She revealed this in an interview with Get In Her Ears shortly after the release of her debut album.
“I heard Elliott Smith’s From a Basement on a Hill when I was a teenager, and I deep-dived into his catalogue,” she told the publication, adding, “My dad borrowed all his CDs from the library and copied them for me.” She would also then confess the name of a second artist who had a similar effect on her decision to begin writing her own songs. “I did the same thing with Iron & Wine. I always wrote alongside learning other people’s songs”.
While both remain significant influences on her work, there’s also another, more modern example of a songwriter operating in the same tradition of confessional and frank songwriting. “I think my main influence is Adrianne Lenker,” Cruickshank admitted. “I love her writing, her voice and, in particular, her guitar playing”.
