Sunny War‘s Armageddon in a Summer Dress is a magnificent achievement, and yet you have never heard of her, have you? Certainly that is the impression I get from a trawl of Manchester’s Independent and High Street stores, and it is mind boggling.
As an artist, Sunny War (Sydney Ward) is ploughing her own startling furrows through an arc of excellence. On Armageddon in a Summer Dress, she gives us hints of American punk, a nod to trip hop, towering but twisted torch ballads, indie attitude and a genre hopping album full of comfort and confrontation.
In person Sydney Ward who hails from Chattanooga, Tennessee seems shy, vulnerable, intelligent and entirely likeable. She is also somebody who has an acute understanding of the world today, quite possibly subscribing to the Hobbesian view that life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short“…except for those driving those conditions of course.
She knows the solution, but also sees how the powers that be do everything they can to ensure that solution is never realised. Her understanding of anarchism is far removed from the juvenile belief that it is an orgy chaos and violence, a belief, incidentally, that the mainstream media are only too happy to propagate for the Establishment’s own ends.
It is this duality that courses through the album, some beautifully crafted music set to on the one hand subliminal, and on the other, in your face, anarchist treatises and the voices of the forgotten.
That said, Armageddon in a Summer Dress is Sunny War‘s “Judas!” moment, because on this album she has all but packed her acoustic guitar trickery away, and gone for the full band treatment. And as with Dylan, it seems to have opened up a world of possibilities that she has not previously explored, alleys and avenues that will likely elevate her overground and into the mainstream, which has only flirted with her previously (I guess with her message, they are hoping she will go away).
Sydney already has a rewarding back catalogue that followed in the footsteps of the famous bluesmen and blueswomen (think Odetta, Sister Rosetta Tharpe (who famously played at Chorlton train station in Manchester and Elizabeth Cotten along with those hail from the same are as she such as Memphis Slim, John Lee Hooker and Sonny Boy Williamson), but following on from 2023’s Anarchist Gospel where she started to expand her sound, this is the best produced and most conventional band format yet, and the songs absolutely fly as a result.
Opening as she means to go on, Sunny War delivers the lovely urgent and bouncy One Way Train, musically like the bastard offspring of REM‘s Stand and It’s the End of the World as we Know It, and lyrically resembling a coffee table chat between David Graeber and Noam Chomsky – “When they’d rather you be fired than be paid a living wage”- it is a positive, determined and lively opening.
The lolloping groove of Bad Times follows, segueing into a memorable swooning chorus that again belies the subject matter as the lives of the downtrodden are slyly attached to such joyous vibrations – “I make the least you can in an hour/I′ve got no money, so I′ve got no power/Back pain and rotting teeth/Written off as working-class grief“. Sunny War’s vocals have developed over time to the point now where they are approaching a classic sound, not the incessant warbling and show off gymnastics of those the majority subscribe to, but a warm, understated, confident and powerful delivery, conjuring up the ghosts of the great American balladeers.
Rise is such classic song writing realised, a wonderful composition drenched in slide guitar and some oscillating vocals from Sydney whilst Ghosts creeps in with a sinister fairground reel (think Jerry Dammers and Ghost Town by The Specials) as Sydney recalls having seen various apparitions and with a real storyteller’s knack she breathes “Could′ve swore I heard him croon/While breathless/Kissed the forehead of a loon/While fleshless“.
If you are new to Sunny War, you should by now have ascertained that she is a mighty fine songwriter and a dextrous lyricist, and this is before you have seen/heard her play guitar! By track Five Sydney has lulled you into a false sense of security with the four offerings thus far, because, as great as they are, the album cranks things up a level with a magnificent triumvirate of quite stunning songs. The first is Walking Contradiction featuring the guest vocals of Steve Ignorant from Crass. It is a superbly crafted composition as Sydney, in a mechanical monotone, spits out the verses whilst Mr Ignorant deals with the chorus in a beautifully, understated way. A couple of years back Sam Fender‘s Aye was like an amphetamine injected 21st Century Subterranean Homesick Blues. Sunny War ploughs a similar path here, but this is the stoner version – contemplative and cognitive; coruscating and challenging – whilst managing to update the sentiment of Pink Floyd‘s Us and Them, although as an anarchic punk she might not care for that comparison.
Lyrics include;
Sucking dick for a dollar′s not the only way to hoe
We sell labor, we sell hours, sell our power, sell our souls
and;
Doesn’t matter what your silly little signs have to say
‘Cause the genocide is funded by the taxes that you pay
and Steve Ignorant‘s chorus contains;
It′s simply users and abusers, us and them, peace and war
Ain′t it funny how you don’t see them as people anymore?
It really is a tour de force.
It is juxtaposed with the following gorgeous Cry Baby and another vocal collaborator, in Memphis’s Valerie June. A beautiful Sunday morning of a song with an epic vibe, it is quite a contrast to the accusatory Walking Contradiction, yet still there is more to come.
No-One Calls Me Baby is the album’s centrepiece. It is a moody work of magnificence, with smoky and sultry vocals, stops and starts, banjo being dextrously plucked, an unforgettable acoustic twang, unsettling backing vocals, “will the wind”, and a quite astonishing mid song interlude. It is the moment on the album, despite suspecting it previously, where it seems beyond doubt that Sunny War is on her way to settling comfortably alongside both her idols of the past and most definitely her peers. She has become a confident chanteuse, and for many, discovering Sunny War will be like when Jeff Buckley briefly came to town, a comparison borne out of the vibe of this album. It is the sound of someone on the verge. The possibilities that were hinted at as far back as 2014’s Worthless E.P., have come to be realised here.
Scornful Heart features vocals from Tre Burt, who has previously been released on John Prine‘s Oh Boy record label, a fine endorsement, and indeed he adds a suitably country-like vocal to a lyric that deals with opposites, and it is attracting.
Gone Again, which contains the album’s title within it lyrics is a melancholic birth to death cycle song with another collaborator, John Doe of LA punk band X (he should sue) who like Sunny War is quite comfortable in other genres. It is a somewhat bleak commentary, brilliantly conjured, on life for the titular woman, but once more set to a relatively jaunty melody.
The penultimate track is another slow burning, brooding sound piece from the pen of Sydney Ward. There is a definite, alluring and sexy vibe, as the lead character asks for proof that there is still love between her and the partner. He appears to have withdrawn his love but the heroine implores that he “come lay your body down“.
In contrast, the closing Debbie Downer has hints of Natalie Merchant, Michelle Shocked and again REM in its jaunty alt-country style, as Sydney takes aim at the type of 21st Century characters who manage to suck the joy out of life with their issues that are founded in dissatisfaction with manufactured wants, as suggested in;
“Your problems stem
From the first world
You speak again
And I might hurl”
And then it halts dramatically… and all that is left is to flip it over and play it again and wallow in the breakthrough brilliance of someone deserving of such.
Sydney Ward, through her Sunny War persona has created a beautifully enticing album made up of a well-developed song-writing craft; some astonishing lyrics and a wide variety of styles and genres. This is befitting from someone who seems to have grown up with, and developed a wide musical palette, and all in the best possible taste.
A decade ago, original wonder was founded in Sydney Ward‘s mind-blowing guitar work, but it says something about her confidence currently that she has for the most part laid her guitar down and focused on other areas of her songs, and it is a thrilling journey. The vocals are sumptuous, the collaborations spot on, and there are a couple of truly epic songs herein. We are hearing Sunny War head towards her mountain peak, all the time fiercely clutching to her anarchist punk roots.
The world is hers to change.
Prince Far Out
(Far away from the Babylon shitstem).
