Video premiere: Sunny War, ‘Age of a Man’

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Sunny War (Photo by Florencia P. Marano)
Sunny War (Photo by Florencia P. Marano)

Sunny War would like to meet a man with a plan. Maybe it’s her itinerant upbringing, maybe it’s the ethos she adopted hanging out in the punk-rock scene, maybe it’s the work ethic that propelled the Venice Beach-based artist to sharpen her finger-picking guitar skills. Either way, slackers need not apply.

“I really don’t have time for the needy,” War confesses in her new single “Age of a Man,” the follow-up to her acclaimed full-length “With the Sun,” which came out in February. It’s a horn-splashed song that showcases War’s wise-beyond-her-years vocals and the prowess, honed by many a session on the Venice Beach boardwalk, of an artist who considers herself a blues guitarist but not a blues artist.

“Age of a Man’s” video, directed by Tommy Nowels and starring War and Aroyn Davis, is a tongue-in-cheek communiqué to her contemporaries: Grow up. “When brainstorming on video ideas for ‘Age of a Man,’ I couldn’t help but picture a grown man in pajamas holding a bottle,” says War (born Sydney Lyndella Ward). “I’m at that age now where you’re either going to school, working on a career, or married with kids on the way. Lately, I’ve often noticed that many of my male peers have no plans or aspirations and are certain everything will just magically fall into place for them. While this ‘philosophy’ doesn’t bother me, I certainly wouldn’t want to date a guy like this. This video is a silly and quite literal interpretation of what it feels like dating heterosexual men in their 20s.”

||| Watch: The video for “Age of a Man”

||| Also: Watch the video for “If It Wasn’t Broken,” from the album “With the Sun”