Columbia Icefield

The Columbia Icefield is an imposing behemoth, the largest icefield in the Rocky Mountains. It's alien, unapproachable, and yet, somehow, a striking metaphor for man's relationship to nature. On Nate Wooley's soaring, Columbia Icefield, the Pacific Northwest bred trumpeter tries to reckon with his relation to the Icefield and humanity in the face of the unapproachable. But this alien entity is laced with contradiction and imposes itself onto Wooley's music in a magnificent way. "This record really came down to trying to build structures that have a feeling of being really large and slightly disturbing, but also, natural," Wooley explains, before adding, "it's earthbound, it comes from a natural place; it's not an attack on our senses. We understand it." And this became the chief task for Wooley and his superlative band-Mary Halvorson on guitar, Susan Alcorn on pedal steel, and Ryan Sawyer on drums-namely, how to express what is most natural and most foreign to us simultaneously?Lionel TrillingSeven in the WoodsWith Condolences