King Woman – “I Want To Be Adored”

Unpopular opinion: the Stone Roses’ recorded oeuvre goes downhill after the first track of their first album. Okay, before you throw your phone to the floor in outrage, let’s just agree to think warmly of “I Want To Be Adored,” with its magical fade-up, twinkling guitars, and gentle vocals. Bay Area doom-gazers King Woman are fond enough of the song to offer us this surprisingly effective cover.

Who’d have thought this deliciously heavy unit with the miserable outlook (really, lead singer Kristina Esfandiari has a solo project called Miserable) would resonate with the song’s titular pursuit of love and adoration? Actually, the connection comes with the song’s other lyric, “I don’t have to sell my soul/He’s already in me” — a reference to the oppressive religious upbringing that has animated so much of King Woman’s work. While the band rides high on the praise showered on their last album, 2017’s Created In The Image Of Suffering, this one-off track should tide over the faithful and entice the curious into further investigation of King Woman’s music.

Download “I Want To Be Adored” at Bandcamp.