Sunny War - Simple Syrup (2021)

Sunny War seems to have lived more in her short life than most people live in a lifetime, those experiences colour her new album, Simple Syrup. Leaving home at the age of 16, she hitchhiked, jumped trains and busked to support herself. She also drank heavily. Yet these days, at the age of 30, she doesn’t drink and founded the skid row chapter Food Not Bombs in Venice, California, having at one time been a recipient receiving of the meals she now provides to others. She is, quite frankly, a woman of remarkable depth.

She is also a woman who doesn’t shy away from dealing with difficult topics, seeming almost drawn to them. “Deployed and Destroyed” recollects the plight of a friend and fellow busker who suffered from PTSD. “You’d believe in angels if you heard him sing/ He’s got a gift only hardships bring/ He’s been called a man since he was a boy/ Fought for Uncle Sam and they left him/ Deployed destroyed.” Her guitar playing reflects the gentle nature of her friend, a soldier abandoned by a system that was supposed to provide for him.

Using a fingerpicking style that she developed early on she says, “I was picking from the beginning. Just because I thought it sounded better. I could only play basic chords, and to me, strumming a D-chord instead of just picking it out doesn’t sound as interesting.” Her guitar playing is an integral part of her style, but it’s what she plays, and what she says that makes her music so interesting.

Her guitar playing provides a beautiful introduction to “Like Nina,” a track about the expectations placed on black women in the music industry. Adopting a jazzy hue, it illustrates the depth of her musical knowledge, especially since Ms Simone was often disgracefully ignored by the business because of her inability to compromise her own musical ideals. She also shines the light on her own less than perfect life in “Kiss A Loser.” Depicting the dichotomies that exist in her own relationships, she makes clear how difficult she can be, “I’m telling you I love you while I’m wishing you were dead.”

“Lucid Lucy” features War’s voice against a background of guitar and cello. Dealing with the art of dreaming, she crafts a warm portrait, “The day was bad glad to see it end/ It seems the bed is your only friend/ Choose where you go and see where you have been.” Finding solace can be difficult, but as War notes, “You can learn to control your dreams, but you can’t control anything else.”

Both the large and small moments on Simple Syrup reflect an artist who is her own woman. She is a product of the years she has spent honing her craft, singing on the streets and in clubs. Sunny War knows what she wants and has found a way to create a world that not only reflects her view of the world but is better for her being in it. Remarkable, simply remarkable.