Bitterness and anger dressed in a sweet retro-soul coating.  Album #8 from Sunny War is her best yet!

Release Date:  21st February 2025

Label: New West Records

Formats: CD / Vinyl / Digital

MUSIC INSPIRED BY A “HAUNTED” HOUSE

Previous album, Anarchist Gospel is now widely recognized as Sunny War’s breakthrough moment. With Armageddon in a Summer Dress, she is poised to carry on with that upward trajectory.  Armageddon… – the 8^th Sunny War album – is her best yet.

Born to a single mother in Nashville, Tennessee, Sydney Lyndella Ward has spent a lifetime moving around the USA, encountering poverty and addiction along the way.  A long stay in Venice Beach, California was followed by a return to her Nashville roots. Recently, she moved on again, this time to her late father’s house in Chattanooga.  And that’s where the story of Armageddon in a Summer Dress started to acquire momentum.

You see, when she moved into her new abode, she quickly became convinced that the place was haunted.  “I spent the winter seeing things and hearing things,” she says.  “The house is 100 years old, and I was in there by myself.  I could hear people walking around and talking, but, when I jumped out of bed with my machete, there was nobody there.  I assumed that it was my dad and I started writing about the ghosts that I was living with.”

DEEPLY INCISIVE SONGS

As it turns out, the house wasn’t haunted. It was, however, riddled with gas leaks and the escaping gas was causing Sunny to hallucinate. By the time she’d found this out the creative juices were well and truly flowing; as was the material for Armageddon. The result is an album chock-full of imaginative, deeply incisive songs that ponder the act of crossing boundaries. Boundaries between worlds, between musical genres, summoning the ghosts of the people that Sunny has lost, the people she once was and the people she was not allowed to be.  It’s an album that confronts adversity with a glorious blend of jangling guitars, swooping organ, retro-soul and bitingly-direct lyrics.  Sunny War always has a lot to say and it’s worth making the effort to listen.

Sunny’s new status as a bon-fide star is attracting quite a queue of big names. They are all keen to collaborate with her. On Armageddon, she’s joined by long-time inspiration Valerie June. In addition, she is also joined by Crass vocalist Steve Ignorant, X bassist/vocalist John Doe and inspirational singer-songwriter Tré Burt.

A LOT OF RETRO-SOUL…

Sunny doesn’t waste time on an intro, or even to draw an audible breath before she launches into her lyrical reflections on the world’s headlong rush towards its reckoning, with opening track One Way Train.  That headlong rush is reflected in the pace of the song. It is an invigorating slice of punchy power-pop with an upbeat, optimistic feel that belies the warnings within the lyrics.

As I’ve already observed, there’s a lot of retro-soul on Armageddon. The anger in Sunny’s lyrics to Bad Times – “I make the least you can in an hour, I’ve got no money, so I’ve got no power” – is dressed in an eminently danceable 60s-Tamla disguise – a disguise that isn’t shed for the well-polished Rise.  To a backing dominated by choppy guitar licks and a crisp drumbeat, Sunny uses lyrics like: “Even still, you have to rise, baby, up with the sun – it might not shine again…” to remind us to live for the moment.

Those gas-induced hallucinations that inspire Armageddon are recalled in the sleazy, slippery, Ghost. Sunny lowers her voice to a virtual whisper singing: “…and now, somehow, you believe in ghosts,” as organ, persistent bass and tinkling guitars paint a spooky background. The shivery setting is completed by the blend of raspy guitar, swaying soul rhythms and disembodied voices in the song’s psychedelic coda.

CRASS

Sunny counts Crass as one of her all-time favourite bands. Walking Contradiction, the album’s magnificent lead single, was written especially for Crass vocalist Steve Ignorant. The song has been described as “…a smart, scowling depiction of late-capitalist America, where even the best of us are compromised by a fundamentally evil system.” Sunny’s lyrics take the form a ranting treatise of the struggles of those forced to live their lives as ‘have-nots.’  Imagine George Harrison’s Piggies re-imagined for the 2020s. The anger in Sunny’s lyrics is doubly-emphasised by the distortion added to Sunny’s and Steve’s voices and by the endless cascade of their delivery.

Cry Baby, the album’s most recent single, was written with Valerie June, who sings backing vocals on the track.  It’s a bluesy number, with a passionate, soulful vocal from Sunny. Her guitar solos are outstanding – it’s classic Sunny War.  And Sunny’s guitar also plays a starring role in No One Calls Me Baby, Sunny’s lament to loneliness and solitude.  “No one calls me baby anymore; I hold my own hand,” she sings, on the closest thing on the album to a power ballad.

MORE GUESTS…

Tré Burt steps forward to add to the bluesy feel of Scornful Heart. Sunny sings in her best Nina Simone tones, before John Doe takes his turn for the delicious Gone Again. Churning guitars and sparkling organ provide the backing as Sunny, once again, urges that we live for today. This time providing a chilling reminder that old age and decrepitude are lurking, just around the corner.

There’s hint of world-weariness to Sunny’s vocals – and to the loping bass and swirling organ – for the humid, swampy, Lay Your Body, before the tune – if not the lyrics – sets a brighter mood for closing track Debbie Downer. 

To conclude an album on which she takes no prisoners whatsoever, Sunny aims her venom at the pessimists and doom-mongers amongst us as she accuses: “You’re a negative Nancy, a Deddie Downer – You’re perpetually antsy, an infinite frowner.”  The blend of bitter lyrics with a bright, danceable tune somehow crystallises Armageddon in a Summer Dress and, more to the point, everything that Sunny War believes in.

An excellent album – not to be missed under any circumstances.

Watch the official video to Walking Contradiction (featuring Steve Ignorant) – the album’s lead single – here:

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