Nate Wooley
Seven Storey Mountain V1
(Pyroclastic Records)
⭑⭑⭑⭑⭑

IN THIS insurgent album, Oregon-born trumpeter and composer Nate Wooley creates a harrowing musical tableau as an accompaniment to the lyrics of Peggy Seeger from her song Reclaim the Night: “If we choose to walk alone/For us there is no safety zone.”

No music could be more relevant to the mass protests after the murder of Sarah Everard. Wooley uses synthesisers, pianos, organ, drums, guitar and women’s choral voices to create a powerful overtone of defiance. “I was fucking angry watching the government attempt to wrest control of women’s bodies and black people incarcerated and killed with impunity,” he attests.

The final repeated Seeger stanza ends with the spurning phrase from Bobbie McGee’s Union Maid above a boiling ocean of turbulent sound: “You can’t scare me!”