Nashville-based singer/songwriter Sunny War has already made a name for herself in the world of punk-inflect blues and folk, crafting songs that fuse caustic reflections and soulful world-weary beauty. Over the past few years, she’s built a cult following with her self-released records, including her 2018 and 2019 breakout records, “With The Sun and Shell Of A Girl”, followed by last year’s “Simple Syrup”. Now she has signed with New West Records and is set to share her label debut, “Anarchist Gospel”, next year.
“I feel like there are two sides of me,” says the Nashville-based singer-songwriter and guitar virtuoso known as Sunny War. “One of them is very self-destructive, and the other is trying to work with that other half to keep things balanced.” That’s the central conflict on her fourth album, the eclectic and innovative “Anarchist Gospel”, which documents a time when it looked like the self-destructive side might win out.
Extreme emotions can make that battle all the more perilous, yet from such trials Sunny has crafted a set of songs that draw on a range of ideas and styles, as though she’s marshaling all her forces to get her ideas across: ecstatic gospel, dusty country blues, thoughtful folk, rip-roaring rock and roll, even avant garde studio experiments. She melds them together into a powerful statement of survival, revealing a probing songwriter who indulges no comforting platitudes and a highly innovative guitarist who deploys spidery riffs throughout every song.
Because it promises not healing but resilience and perseverance, because it doesn’t take shit for granted, “Anarchist Gospel” holds up under such intense emotional pressure, acknowledging the pain of living while searching for something that lies just beyond ourselves, some sense of balance between the bad and the good.
Sunny War has shared a new taste of “Anarchist Gospel”, “Higher,” a tender, sentimental Americana ballad with David Rawlings on guitar, Jack Lawrence of The Raconteurs/The Dead Weather on bass, John James Tourville of the Deslondes on pedal steel, Megan Britt Coleman on drums, and Jo Schornikow on mellotron.
the upcoming album ‘Anarchist Gospel’ out February 3rd on New West Records.
The Fat Angel Sings 