USC band Last Flight Out gears up for a future in flux

For alternative pop band Last Flight Out, February has been one of the most important months of their fledgling career. The trio released their first EP, “Baggage,” on Spotify and Apple Music, while performing their first live shows as a group, including a noontime slot in front of Tommy Trojan on Monday.

The band comprises three USC seniors: Christopher Meyer on lead vocals and keyboards, Joey Hall on drums and Paul Chyz on guitar and the production front. The three have been musically involved throughout their time at USC, but Last Flight Out is undoubtedly the largest project to date for each of them.

Last Flight Out is a USC band through and through. Hall, an electrical engineering major, and Meyer, a biological science major, met in the dorms as freshmen, bonding early over their mutual passion for music. While the two have been jamming as friends for a while, they never considered writing and performing their own songs until last year.

Hall describes their initial vision as a “two-person, Twenty One Pilots-esque thing” where Meyer is on lead vocals and keyboard and Hall handles the drumming. When recording over the summer, however, the two felt that their instrumental lineup was scarce, which led to Hall’s enlistment of Chyz’s guitar and production chops.

Chyz, an electrical engineering major and music recording minor, has played guitar since he was six years old, and started teaching himself music production as a teenager. Before joining the group, his compositions and contributions were mostly guitar-based instrumental pieces, along with various remixes and reconstructions of existing songs.

On Baggage, Chyz provides refreshing guitarwork and tasteful synthesizers that give the power-pop style songs more color. As a whole, the mix of personalities and influences on the EP is apparent as each member had a hand in the songwriting process.

Meyer describes the project as a collection of themes that he has noticed in everyday life, with stories that touch on partying, relationships and the experience of youth. Hall’s varied, and at times almost tribal, style of drumming also provide an intriguing take on the pop music that has inspired Meyer for so long.

As Meyer describes it, the name Last Flight Out implies one of the band’s heavier realities: They feel they have very little time left to pursue a career in music. With all three members expected to graduate this May, the band’s future is not entirely clear at this point.

“This is kind of our last chance, our last realistic opportunity to go into music,” Meyer said. “We do have science as well, which was something we were planning on pursuing until this showed up, but we’re really working hard to make it happen.”

While each of their plans for the future are not concrete at this point, they ultimately plan on remaining in Los Angeles after graduation. If this scenario unfolds, Hall says the band will stay together as long as it can.

“The plan is to stay in Los Angeles and keep playing music,” Hall said without hesitation. “The plan is to take this as far as we can.”

The blueprint is certainly unclear for the trio’s future after graduation, but USC’s campus should provide the best possible stage for the finale of their college careers.