Band of the Week: Prabir and The Substitutes

Hometown: Richmond, Va.

Fun Fact: Prabir and the Substitutes are touring the East Coast this summer in support of The Silver Beats, Japan’s premier Beatles tribute band.

Why They’re Worth Watching: Full of crunchy guitars, McCartney-inspired bass lines and cooing harmonies, Five Little Pieces takes the best bits of classic pop/rock and funnels them through a beat-to-hell Fender Deluxe amplifier.

For Fans Of: The Sonics, The Hollies, Dr. Dog

During a recent stay in Delaware, Prabir and the Substitutes decided to pocket a souvenir for the road. “It was this painting on the wall of our hotel room,” explains frontman Prabir Mehta. Unbeknownst to the band, the artwork was actually bolted down; guitarist Chris Smith ended up putting a hole in the foundation when he yanked it free. The Substitutes were shocked. “We scrambled around trying to fix it,” Mehta laughs. “We couldn’t find anything clear, not even white toothpaste, so we ended up spackling it with cream cheese the next morning, as if there was never a painting there in the first place.”

Stealing amateur art can’t rival the window-breaking, furniture-destroying antics of most hotel trashing veterans, but Prabir and the Substitutes don’t want to be the next Mötley Crüe. They’d rather pitch their tent closer to the pop camp. Like a 1960s sock-hop band from the wrong side of the tracks, they mix tight vocal harmonies with blasts of Rhodes organ and guitar feedback. Or, as Mehta describes, he and his bandmates take vintage pop hooks, “flood them with vocals, and turn it all up as loud as possible.”

When Mehta’s former band, a brashly melodic power trio named The Rachel Nevadas, began to slow down in 2004, the frustrated frontman threatened to “get some substitutes” if his two bandmates quit. The warning didn’t prevent the group from splitting up that same year, but it did leave Prabir with a promising name for his new project. “It plays on the classic ‘Buddy Holly & the Crickets’ thing,” Mehta says of his band’s moniker, “but it’s also weird because you have this name, 'Prabir,' that no one’s ever heard of.” Mehta embraced that weirdness by writing a batch of tight, melody-driven songs and piecing together a line-up of local musicians, most of whom had cut their teeth in loud rock bands. The mix of distorted Epiphones and pretty pop harmonies worked, and Prabir and the Substitutes officially took root in 2005.

The Substitutes are currently touring in support of Five Little Pieces, which packs nine songs into a hook-filled 27 minutes. “The Kiss” tackles those pesky butterflies that precede every “first kiss” experience, while “Everybody’s Got Somebody” takes an entirely different approach to romance, complete with cymbal crashes and f-bombs. Most importantly, the Substitutes find time to pay homage to their retro influences, channeling Brian Wilson during an A cappella number and winking at the Shangri-Las during “Trains,” which very well may be the male counterpart to “Train from Kansas City.”

“It’s a pretty daunting task to make somebody else happy with your music,” Mehta sums up, “but that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to let people know that things will be okay, even if it’s just for a couple of minutes.”