Leigh: Empathy for my Future Self (digital outlets)

This confident and mature debut album by an Auckland-based singer and multi-instrumentalist embraces electro-noise (She's Back), thrusting electro-pop (He's Giving, March of the Cucks), disruptive pop (Purple Pals, the skittering Comfortable?) and classy, swooning pop (Twenty-Two).

The album's backstory here is in Comfortable?: “Take another name, 'Ca-me-ron' don’t feel right . . . Everybody has to make up their mind E-ven-tu-a-'Leigh'.”

Leigh here was Cameron McCurdy who has transitioned and the album – released on the first anniversary of starting Hormone Replacement Therapy – is dedicated to “the boy I once was, and dedicated with empathy to the woman I will be”.

This is the album as a journey and allusions to autobiography.

The ballad I Still Love the Moon (“and she loves me too”) may have a stuttering undercurrent of increasingly oppressive electronica but it opens with romantic saxophone by Finn Grieve; there is bitter humour in the electro-clatter of He's Giving (“why does God give the biggest dicks and the fattest tits to all of his most gender nonconforming children?”), and the menace of March of the Cucks is withering: “I confuse you while I'm warming her up. I look like every other girl you would have fucked . . . sincerely, we mean you no harm. Just let us dance or the dolls will fuck your girlfriends.”

The cover by Tashi Donnelly captures the essence of this album, although the woman could look a little more happy because you sense Leigh certainly is.

While many trans artists speak of the problems of identity and making the change (and no one should doubt them about that), Leigh – while certainly mentioning them as on Comfortable? – comes across as optimistic and comfortable in her new life over the cycle of songs here.

“For months now I can say I'm happy, hormone balanced brain and body. The boy is dead, the girl I am is thriving. I set him free and he'll never be seen again,” she says on the telling He's Gone towards the end.

A gentle and generous acceptance after the journey.

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You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here