Show Report: Fearless Flyers/The Psychodelics @ The Regent, 1/23/2025
Feets of strength
It's the Regent's mission to murder my feet. In an effort to improve the line-of-sight for patrons, the DTLA venue's floor slopes downward toward the stage. This is an absolutely bare-minimum quality-of-life feature for a concert hall, the kind of utilitarianism you'd think would be common in spaces that house live events. And yet, places like The Wiltern, one of my least favorite locales in all of Los Angeles, seem content to shirk this simple amenity, ensuring that you can't see a goddamn thing unless you're up in the nosebleeding balcony. Anyway, this is all to say that one of my senses is appreciative of the see-more initiative. But, damn, does it ever do a number on these old bones. It also doesn't help that I usually stand in the same spot whenever I'm at The Regent, which is where the grade is at its steepest, which may as well be Mount Rakaposhi as far as my ankles are concerned. Maybe that's on me. Maybe I should find somewhere different to stand. Or, maybe I'm a creature of habit until my bitter end.
For this sold-out Fearless Flyers show, I don't think I was alone in feeling the aches. The crowd trended older, perhaps catching their first show out since the fires. (Cory Wong, Fearless Flyers's rhythm guitarist, announced that proceeds were going to first responders.) That would explain why the venue was packed out as soon as the show was meant to start. Old equals early, as the stereotype goes, I guess. And that's another thing that Regent does that sets it apart from a lot of LA: its events begin on time. At 8pm on the dot, The Psychodelics came out to funk.
Now, ya guy was a little late because he was looking at art at a museum. Look, I'll own that, too. Neat exhibit, though; check out the photorealism collection at MOCA if you're in town. What that quick run through the museum meant is that I missed the first few songs from The Psychodelics and missed a couple more as I got a water to sip and bounced around like a pinball, trying to find the spot where I'd take root for the rest of the night. Does that KO me from having an opinion on the feel-good funksters? I mean, if I were getting paid for this, I'd say so. But this is a ramshackle report filled with rash takes, so let's let another one fly.
In a much farer world, the Psychodelics would be big. That's both a positive and a negative. The band reminds me a bit of, say, Mint Condition if it were more of a '60s and '70s throwback. Thinking negatively, that may be the problem: it sounds old, out of place, out of step even if it existed in the '90s. However, LA is undergoing a surge of genial funk bands, and, most notably for this crowd comprised mainly of music nerds, music school students, and music school teachers, the musicianship was on point. Plus, the songs were hooky, both in the earworm and good vibes sense. Here's the thing, though: I found the music to be kind of anodyne. The Psychodelics go hard, but the songs themselves are a little flat, relying too hard on itching the part of your brain where it's like, Have I heard this before? You haven't…but you have, if you know what I mean. It's a good opener for that reason, but I'd be curious how I'd take the band as a main event instead of a table setter. Also, gotta say, the bass was mixed way too loud, but when your frontman is a bassist, you gotta let them eat. Ask Glenn Benton.
And then there was a band that not only eats but feasts. Somehow, this was Fearless Flyers's LA debut. Considering the band is something of a spinoff of the very LA Vulfpeck, and all of the members met here, that's kind of amazing. It'd be like the Red Hot Chili Peppers never playing here. And now that I've written that, man, do I ever wish that were true. Anyway, because of that fact, this set for the stripped down funk quartet became something of an event.
Let's talk setlist before performance: loaded. We got some hits up top, including the "Reelin' in the Years" cover in the two-spot that got a huge response because the Regent was suffused with Dan dorks. Then, Fearless Flyers played all of IV in full. That was dinner; here's dessert: we got a preview of the forthcoming V, which the Flyers cut just two days before this show. The songs didn't even have titles yet, much to the chagrin of lead guitarist Mark Lettieri, who needed some prompting from Wong to remember which song was up next. "You know, that song we wrote together?" Burn. Good-natured, of course. (Somehow, Setlist.fm already has song titles for those four tracks — who is the sleuth down there? Can they tell me what this year holds in store for me? How will I die?) OK, yes: burying the lede here. The new songs rip, even more meticulously easygoing — the Flyers's inherent oxymoron — than even IV, allowing bassist Joe Dart and drummer Nate Smith to star as time-warping engineers while still retaining the Stax-y thwap that has made Fearless Flyers's name.
And, goddamn, were the Fearless Flyers ever living up to their name this set, nailing every song and tossing in an additional helping of jaw-dropping shredosity that went above and beyond god status. Needless to say, these dudes can play. Like I said about IV in my year-end list, Dart and Smith were on one, seemingly one-upping each other at every turn. Smith, though, had the highlight of the night during a drum solo that blew everyone's hair back. It was one of the few times I've seen everyone engaged in a drum solo. And during it, I thought to myself, Is Smith the best drummer I've seen in the flesh? Has to be. The Flyers kicked my ass, a Broad Street Bullies beatdown of good vibes, which is fitting since I could barely walk after standing for three hours in the Regent.
***
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