Anarbor Releases Fourth Studio Album, “Love & Drugs”

Phoenix-based alternative rock band Anarbor’s newest album, Love & Drugs, showcases an evolution of a band in their (almost 20) years together. This fourth studio album via ONErpm marks a new chapter for the band, one that lead singer Slade Echeverria and guitarist Danny Stravers have truly dedicated themselves to crafting. Through relentless touring, multiple studio albums with Hopeless Records, and placing on various Billboard charts, Anarbor has made a name for themselves in the ’00’s pop-punk and alternative scene. 

Love & Drugs is filled with indie-pop nostalgia. Its opener, “Slow Distraction”, is a strong track “about the emptiness everyone felt during and post-Covid,” the band says. “It’s also a song about trying not to let the facade of social media discourage you from pushing forward; most of what you see on the internet today is an exaggeration or attempt to portray an impossibly happy and positive life while leaving out the truth and hardships of life.”

“Letter in a Suitcase” contains an upbeat message telling the listener to go after what they want. “Sometimes we have to distance ourselves from the dependency of others to find ourselves before we can truly be useful to anyone else, and often in that journey we tend to find people better suited for us that allow us to unapologetically be ourselves.”

“Drugs”, “Until I’m With You”, and “Durango” center around love and its highs and lows. These tracks tell of relatable love stories and hopeless romantic feelings. “Emergency”, featuring Sammy Adams, “address[es] the fear culture that grew out of control over the course of the last couple elections and the pandemic. We’re by no means a political band, but regardless of your affiliation, I think we can all agree that the daily level of which mainstream & social media has propagated fear in our society is disgusting,” the band explains. “The more afraid we become, the more we watch, the more we post, the more we fight with our fellow people. It’s a vicious behavioral cycle that needs to change, and it’s up to all of us to remind those close to us that there’s no logical reason to get too worked up about something they have zero control over.”

Dive even deeper into the album and you will find tracks like the relationship goals of “Honeymoon in Tokyo” and  the “everything’s gonna be alright” song, “Reason to Die”. There is also “Don’t Call Me Back” – a touching tribute to a drummer named Tyler Hedstrom, lost to suicide at a young age, that once joined the band for a tour. 

The album closes with the “coming out of quarantine party song”, “Good Time”, then “Bad Love”,  which tells the story of a man and woman’s co-dependent, toxic relationship as it falls apart – an epic ending for Love & Drugs.

Find this and more exciting new music on our Alchemical Multigenre Mixdown playlist on Spotify.