Photo By Joshua Black Wilkins
Sunny War will release her New West Records debut Anarchist Gospel on February 3rd, 2023. The 14-song set was produced by Andrija Tokic (Alabama Shakes, Hurray for the Riff Raff) and features appearances by Jim James of My Morning Jacket, Allison Russell, David Rawlings, Jack Lawrence of the Raconteurs, Micah Nelson, John James Tourville of The Deslondes, Kyshona Armstrong, Dennis Crouch, and more. All songs were written by Sunny War with the exception of “Baby Bitch” (Ween) and “Hopeless” (Van Hunt). With Anarchist Gospel, Sunny has crafted an eclectic set of songs that draw on a range of ideas and styles: 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.
“I feel like there are two sides of me,” says the singer-songwriter and guitar virtuoso. “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 Anarchist Gospel, which documents a time when it looked like the self-destructive side might win out. Sunny says, “Everybody is a beast just trying their hardest to be good. That’s what it is to be human. You’re not really good or bad. You’re just trying to stay in the middle of those two things all the time, and you’re probably doing a shitty job of it. That’s ok, because we’re all just monsters.”
Today, Holler premiered the Anarchist Gospel highlight “New Day.” Calling her “Haunting and heart-stopping,” they say, “Like Will Oldham and Mark Eitzel and the great sad-folk singers of our time, when she sings, Sunny War has that same sense of effortless expressiveness in every turn of phrase and that same ability to find light somewhere in all that darkness.” Sunny War says, “‘New Day’ is probably the most sensitive song on the album. It is very emo. For me, it is about how whimsical love can feel. When we fall out of love, we realize we were almost under a spell. To me, believing in love is much like believing in magic. And I believe in both.”
