At Work: Sunny War
Photo: Joshua Black Wilkins
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The first single off Sunny War’s upcoming album, Anarchist Gospel, lays out an inner struggle that the singer/guitarist has been trying to mitigate for the better part of her life.
“You’re an angel/ You’re a demon/ Ain’t got no rhyme/ Ain’t got no reason,” she sings in the deceptively upbeat chorus of “No Reason.” The track—a catchy, momentum-heavy slice of War’s signature electric-folk sound— also includes self-reflective lines like, “Good intentions that you keep/ Don’t change the fact that you’re a beast” and “Bust your back trying to behave/ To your best self you are a slave.”
“It’s been the main problem throughout my life,” admits War, who struggled with substance abuse issues and weathered a couple of stints in jail during her time as a young musician busking in Venice, Calif. “I have them both now— the angel and the demon—but most of the time, the demon is running the show. So I’m trying to keep it more balanced.
“And I guess that’s maturing, or something,” she adds with a chuckle. “It’s about not just doing the things that you want to do all the time.”
Before Anarchist Gospel, War traditionally tracked her tunes at Hen House Studios in Venice but for her new album—and after a tough breakup—she decided to return to her original hometown of Nashville.
Her new cuts certainly bear the marks of a Music City-produced record, boasting a lush sound, a crack backing band and plenty of special guests, including My Morning Jacket’s Jim James, David Rawlings, Allison Russell, Micah Nelson and The Raconteurs’ Jack Lawrence. (War actually met James and Nelson back in Los Angeles—Nelson through Hen House and James through Food Not Bombs, a community organization that provides food to the city’s unhoused population.)
The songs were mostly written at the end of War’s California tenure and capture her state of mind at the time, including her thoughts on the end of her recent relationship— especially opener “Love’s Death Bed,” her cover of Ween’s “Baby Bitch” and “New Day,” on which she compares getting over a relationship to getting clean from an addiction. (“Because I am an addict, everything is an addiction,” she explains.)
Throughout Anarchist Gospel, War showcases her unique brand of folk, blues and gospel, all centered on her deft, mostly two-fingered guitar picking and her sweet, understated voice. Some have dubbed her music “folkpunk”—which jibes with stated influences that range from Eliott Smith to Bad Brains and Chet Atkins—but War says that she just writes lyrics “like somebody who grew up in Venice.”
“I really like blues guitar and folk guitar, but I never think of trying to make lyrics that match that—it would be weird if I was trying to be like, ‘Oh, I’m down on the crossroads,’” she jokes. “To me, it’s just normal, maybe because I’m coming from a busking background. I’m used to seeing some gutter punk with all kinds of crazy crust-punk patches, and they’re playing banjo on the street, just straight traditional bluegrass. It’s like, ‘I like this and I like this.’”
