woman is a tree by the last dinner party
having a fun time with the last dinner party lately!
i listened to their first album (prelude to ecstasy) a while back and really dug it. sort of waffled on their second album (from the pyre) when it came out late last year. it was one that didn't catch my attention on a first pass-- kind of felt like the vibe, or the sound, or the whatever, was too similar to distinguish from the first album? but honestly, i think it just needed dedicated listening because i've been appreciating most of the tracks over the past few weeks.
got a chance to actually see tldp in concert recently and they were impressive live! bringing it up because i think my favorite track on "from the pyre" is woman is a tree, which i have only just realized i have been incorrectly referring to as "woman is tree" -- i find the mistake fun because the song is so incomprehensible in the opening vocalizations-- eerie and in your bones? dropping the "a" feels reflective of that somehow.
anyways, yellowjackets -- what i fondly call my "lesbian cannibal plane crash show" and not the insect -- has been my main hyperfixation since 2023, so i was super pumped to learn from a friend that woman is a tree is based off it. when i dug around, all i could find was this BBC article that briefly attributed tldp's inspiration to yellowjackets (and fuck yeah to the free palestine mention). but even with limited explanation, it's easy to fill in the blanks.
the OST for yellowjackets includes lots of uncanny, feminine vocalizations. if you listen to this video of woman is a tree (i think the yellowjackets ref is more obvious live) and then listen to this reddit vid with bits of the OST, you can see what's going on:
i also liked the way this article spoke about the song and want to riff off it.
In the second half of the album, there’s a switch in perspectives with songs following emotions and sentiments over story. The study on gender roles continues in “Woman Is A Tree,” in which the band’s vocalisation in the introduction and bridge feel like a witch’s chant. The analogy of women being trees that a forest feeds off of is emphasised by men being described as different birds throughout the song. Melodic Mag
i take "from the pyre" to be about the challenges and burdens of womanhood and the underlying power that roils beneath an experience of womanhood (whether it's something you've come to, or something you've left behind). for me, as a genderfucked butch, i see some parts of my womanhood as bruising. i mean, there can actually be physical pain associated with being a woman if you have certain parts and hormones that's kind of baked into the experience. but even if not, there's a passive pain that gets tangled up inside you -- outside stuff, pushed on you stuff, categorization & alienation, if that makes sense?
maybe more directly: misogyny in all its creative forms and the tenderness that leaves behind.
so in that sense, "woman is a tree", or "woman is tree" feels like appropriate language. the natural world also experiences similar bruising, boundary breaking, and that baked in pain i mentioned. if you look at nature, it's hard to argue that it hasn't been treated with violence and cruelty. but there's also this resilience that pushes through the cracks and a beauty in the struggle & clearly magnificent power there.
whatever that thoroughline is, i feel it deeply in womanhood. it's why, despite all my gender stuff, it's something that stays inside and channels through me as i interact with other expressions, identities, or adjacent possibilities.
i also like that "from the pyre" moves through religious and explicitly biblical themes (who'd have guessed from the last dinner party). obviously, there's the woman being from man's rib thing: the fucked up message that women are a lesser derivative. but "woman is a tree" feels spinal in a confrontational and resistant way. the sentiment is more authentic than all that bullshit: woman as closer to something deep inside the earth, and the birds (men, as melodic mag says) as auxiliary. not quite inside that power the same way.
that pulls me back to themes in yellowjackets too, where the premise of a girls soccer team getting lost in the wilderness is the focus. there are male characters but they take the sidelines as the girls lead survival efforts, and it's hard to explain but there's something... so correct about that? because there's a forcefulness to womanhood. there's a bite to it that comes from everything that's hard about moving through the world in this way.
anyways, i just fucking love yellowjackets and i fucking love this song, so i wanted to babble a bit.