The Criticals return with a heady rush of longing in their new single, "Adoringly Drunk." It encapsulates the tumult of desire and the pain of unrequited love and then unleashes a cacophony.
Parker Forbes's vocals and Cole Shugart's guitar paint a visceral picture of a night out, a table for two, and a heart on a string. While relentless percussion and deep, pulsing bass keep time, pop-driven guitar hooks swirl around Forbes' urgent, aching vocals. He begs for something, anything to cling to, choking out, "Give me life. Air. anything." But just across the table, his affections are greeted with a cool, unreadable gaze.
"Adoringly Drunk" throbs with desperation, the energy reflecting the high of infatuation, intoxicating and dizzying. Forbes supplies the gut-punch revelation: "I would die every night If it meant you'd maybe desire me." It's the sort of brio, reckless devotion that makes an instantaneous impulse an obsession. The Criticals latch onto that sensation with a heady crackle of tight-instrumentation loosey-goosey emotion.
With Adoringly Drunk, The Criticals further assert themselves as one of the most intoxicating forces in modern rock, frenzied, fearless, and impossible to ignore.