HOW TO BUY… Sunny War and friends

SUNNY WAR Shell Of A Girl

ANUS KINGS Seems You Haven’t Learned

(2011)

In the late 2000s, Sunny War started a folk-punk duo in the mould of The Moldy Peaches and The Dead Milkmen. She and bassist Brian Rodriguez sang fast, loud, sometimes gleefully juvenile songs with dark undercurrent about addiction and homelessness. On their debut, War picks every song like a guitar hero in training. 7/10

SUNNY WAR Worthless

(2015)

War recorded this short album after getting clean and while she was busking in LA. It’s just her voice and guitar, but already she’s a masterful player, updating old blues techniques for the Venice Beach boardwalk. But it also reveals her to be a sharp, insightful songwriter who conjures the complexities of sobriety and love in economic language. 7/10

SUNNY WAR With The Sun

(2018)

For many fans, With The Sun is War’s debut: the album that introduced her to a national audience beyond the boardwalk. She has refined her picking style and her songwriting, but here it’s her voice that shines through. Whether she’s singing about a soured relationship or an explosion of police violence, she sounds both tough and tenderhearted. 9/10

PARTICLE KID + SUNNY WAR Particle War

(2019) War and Micah Nelson split their collaborative EP down the middle, each bringing five songs and one cover. She chose The Clash’s “Lover’s Rock”, which she quietens into a lovely folk seduction. The duo’s chemistry changes from one song to the next, from the doo-wop of “The Brave” to the skewed country-rock of “Give Up”, featuring The Doors’ John Densmore. 8/10

(2019) War wrote her follow-up while living in a possibly haunted halfway house in downtown Los Angeles. On some of her most harrowing songs, she looks back at her own past, sizing up her experiences on songs like “Drugs Are Bad” and “Love Is Pain”. A chronicle of perseverance and persistence. 8/10

SUNNY WAR Simple Syrup

(2021)

A quietly powerful album that simmers with outrage. “Deployed And Destroyed” is her version of John Prine’s “Sam Stone” – a eulogy for a veteran broken by combat. And “Like Nina” shirks the heavy expectations placed on the shoulders of black women artists. There’s a grim humor to her love songs like “Love Is A Pest” and “Kiss A Loser”: “Come and kiss a loser if that’s really your kink ”. 8/10