Anarbor – The Words You Don't Swallow

At a certain point in television shows, writers will often bring in an ‘edgy’ character. This character plays guitar, sings in a band – maybe he rides a skateboard or some other hastily approximated value of ‘cool’. Viewers wait, and eventually the band get a gig or someone storms in on a practice session for some teen melodrama. And, despite this character’s perceived ‘grit’, the band is nine times out of ten generic, harmless pop-rock with a few blared out power chords thrown in, with punters left wondering: ‘What is this shite?’ Well, Anarbor are a close real-life approximation to this fictional group. 

Farmed out of the southwest US, this four-piece purports to be propagating a classic rock homage, but it sounds more like they’ve grafted several early-noughties influences – namely White Stripes, The Strokes and Incubus – onto by-the-numbers pop-punk. While this might work just fine for the purposes of the here today, gone tomorrow Top 40, it doesn’t give any kind of sustenance. [Jason Morton]