Premiere: Black Light Animals share psyched-out cover of Brandy’s ‘I Wanna Be Down’ shines

Black Light Animals. // photo courtesy the artist

Kansas City’s Black Light Animals know how to make music that feels like it was designed for woozy, hazy summer nights. Their 2020 debut LP, Playboys of the Western World, fused soul, spaghetti western film scores, and psychedelia in a manner both modern and retro, without ever feeling like a pastiche.

The quintet of Cole Bales (lead and background vox, keyboards) Cody Calhoun (lead guitar), Branden Moser (bass), Alex Hartmann (drums), and Nate Hubert (Rhodes, background vox) hasn’t released any new music since last year’s “Pink Lemonade,” but they return with a cover of Brandy’s 1994 debut single, “I Wanna Be Down”—and you have got to hear it.

Black Light Animals describe their cover as a “psyched out take on Brandy’s R&B classic, ‘I Wanna Be Down,’ featuring phased out vocals and guitar spacey synthesizers, and hip hop low end.”

The band’s Cole Bales says of their choice to cover the 30 year-old gem, “We thought this song would be a nice teaser for our upcoming record stylistically. Besides loving the song, I think it fits this nostalgic image we were trying to conjure up for the record. I wanted a lot of these tunes to feel like a mix tape of stuff that I grew up hearing on the radio so I figured a song that myself and a lot of people my age actually grew up hearing would be the perfect way to introduce the vibe of the upcoming record.”

Black Light Animals play the Ship on Saturday, Auguest 3, with Nathan Corsi and My Atomic Daydream. Details on that show here.