The third album for Phoenix, AZ's
Anarbor,
The Words You Don't Swallow finds the onetime teen punk band maturing into a mainstream emo-rock outfit. Having never veered too far afield from bands like
Green Day and
blink-182, here
Anarbor are clearly picking up the massively popular emo-pop flag laid down by the dormant
Fall Out Boy. These are straight-ahead rock songs with a bent toward revved-up power pop and some punk-disco-inflected choruses. In that sense, songs like "Drugstore Diet," "Let the Games Begin," and "This Can't Be Healthy" make good on the angular but catchy modern rock promise that
Anarbor are clearly capable of. All of which is to say that
The Words You Don't Swallow is a bit of a transitional album that goes down easily. ~ Matt Collar