SUNNY WAR

A deep devotion to music has sustained SUNNY WAR through adversity and addiction. Bringing a punk edge to her tough-hearted roots music, she emerges as Americana’s brightest star and biggest disruptor. “I really like to write about the world ending,” she tells Stephen Deusner

FTER arough break-up in 2021, Sydney Ward found herself alone and all but imprisoned in the Los Angeles apartment she and her partner had shared. “I had to stay behind and finish the lease,” she recalls. “I was really depressed and started drinking alot. Iwas isolated from everyone Iknew. We’d had the same group of friends and I didn’t want to talk to them or anyone else. Iwas barely eating. I left the apartment only when I really had to.

“I had no idea what Iwas going to do when the lease was up, or if I could even make it that long. Iwas contemplating suicide. I felt like Ihad no fight left in me.”

Ward –who goes by her stage name, Sunny War –can be bracingly frank when she describes this and other dark moments in her life. But she is equally forthcoming when she explains how music has let in alittle light. At that low point, she wrote asong called “I Got No Fight”, ableak blues ballad that anchors her latest album, the toughhearted Anarchist Gospel. “Will I survive the war inside my head, tossing and turning in my lonely bed?” she asks herself, her nimble guitar trailing the vocal melody. It’s adire moment, painful in its honesty, yet her spidery licks and soulful vocals betray akernel of optimism at the song’s heart.

“I felt better after writing it,” she says, noodling on her beloved guitar, which she has nicknamed Big Baby. “That’s something that really helps me alot –just to sit down and write out what I’m feeling.” Then she lets out asly chuckle: “I think all my songs are just tantrums, really.”

The two years since that breakup has brought even tougher tragedies, but currently War is enjoying the breakout success of Anarchist Gospel. She recently opened for one of her heroes, Bonnie Raitt, at Austin City Limits, then immediately hopped aflight across the Atlantic to kick off a European tour. The album’s earthy blend of disparate styles established her as an exciting and unusual new voice in Americana music.