NoVA-bred Sub-Radio is releasing its new album, Same Train // Different Station, on March 11. It’s an indie-pop record that lead guitarist and vocalist Matt Prodanovich likens to Walk the Moon and Smallpools. To celebrate, the band, who’s been together since its members were in high school in Sterling, are playing Jammin’ Java that night. We caught up with Prodanovich to ask about the new album (and the best burger chain in NoVA.)
Q: How’d you get your start?
A: Basically, myself and one of my good friends, [guitarist and keyboardist] John Fengya, were learning guitar together and decided we wanted to start a band. We found some other people to play with [including drummer and vocalist] Mike Pereira, [lead singer] Adam Bradley and [guitarist and vocalist] Mike Chinen.
Q: How have you evolved over the years?
A: We definitely started out more acoustic-centered. But now we’ve taken more of an indie-rock approach, especially on our album that’s about to come out. It’s a lot more mature. I think we’ve grown a lot as songwriters in the past seven or eight years.
Q: There are so many young musicians trying to make it. What makes Sub-Radio stand out?
A: I like to think one of the main things that makes us stand out is our songwriting. I think for a lot of younger bands, they do well and they have good songs and a lot of their live performances are pretty good. But I think if you look at our songs, they’re consistently well-written. I think that’s a strength of ours. I think our live performance has gotten pretty dang good. We’ve really worked on it a lot in the past two or three years.
Q: This upcoming show is a release party for your new album, Same Train // Different Station. What can you tell me about the album?
A: It’s a 10-track album. It’s going to be featuring brand-new songs. There are two we released earlier on an EP, but we’ve recorded new versions of them in a better studio. It’s a really cohesive album. Everything was recorded within the span of three weeks, so everything is very cohesive from song to song. It’s a very tight album.
Q: In addition to dropping the new LP, you’re also dropping the “Standard” from your name. What’s the reasoning behind that?
A: The biggest reason we’re changing our name from Sub-Radio Standard to Sub-Radio is it was a hard name to remember. People would continuously introduce us as Sub-Standard Radio, which is not what we want to be remembered as [laughs]. So we think Sub-Radio is shorter, sweeter. It’s kind of cool, too, because radio waves are the lowest known waves that are able to be captured by any kind of devices we have, so it’s, like, under that.
Q: Some of you attend James Madison University in Harrisonburg, and some of you are here in NoVA attending George Mason. How do you manage to work together as a band?
A: We’ve pretty much all graduated now except for me and [Chinen]—we’re still at JMU. Mark Siford, our bassist, is going to be graduating from GMU. It’s still tough to get everyone’s schedules completely together, but a lot of times, we end up switching up between me and Chinen driving to Sterling to practice and [the others] driving to Harrisonburg.
Lightning Round
Q: Rolling Stones or Beatles?
A: Beatles.
Q: Vinyl or Spotify?
A: Vinyl.
Q: Fender or Gibson?
A: Gibson.
Q: Lastly and most importantly, which NoVA-based burger chain is better: Five Guys or Elevation Burger?
A: I’m gonna have to go with Five Guys. I haven’t been to Elevation much. I’m gonna go with Five Guys. I’ve been there quite a few times
