The Starlight Mints make pop that sounds like nothing else but can be liked by anyone. It is great pop music because the melodies are memorable, the lyrics are catchy, and the guitars/bass/drumming and singing are complete with ooooo's and ahhhh's and other pop onomatopoeias. Why the music is so unique is more difficult to pin down.

At first, I thought the uniqueness came from the everything but the kitchen sink number of instruments used over the course of the album. The press release for Drowaton gives the following laundry list of instruments: "church bells, horns, pianos, violin, tambourine, triangle, synths, and sound effects." These adjunct instruments tend to take over the traditional instruments in defining the diverse, psychedelic melodies throughout the album. The lead single "Inside of Me?" immediately grabs the listener with a fun, rollicking piano line, and I couldn't imagine the album's closing song "Sidewalk" being nearly as moving without its stately strings and rallying horns. And those smaller instruments don't get lost in the shuffle — a looping, sad-sounding, robotic, whirring sound effect on the album's title song perfectly accentuates the dark yet slightly playful mood.

But really, what indie band doesn't use such a variety of instruments? It seems like every review I write for The PhiLL(er) includes a "wowee, look at all of these cool instruments" sentence.

Next, I thought maybe what made Drowaton completely unlike other pop music had something to do with its lyrics/singing. The lyrics certainly are a rather unusual, weird, but cool series of word associations with the occasional nonsensical story. The opening track "Pumpkin" establishes the lyrical tone with some pretty falsetto tra-la-las and lead singer Allan Vest claiming, "My love is nearly something like a pumpkin." I am not quite sure why his love approaches the characteristics of a pumpkin, but I really enjoy how his high voice provides a melodious complement to the confident horns, edgy guitars, and deep bass. The song "Seventeen Devils" seems to be an epic about a boy and the aforementioned seventeen devils, but even better than this song's main subject is the incredibly catchy chorus describing how said boy just wanted "the keys to everything/assorted memory/and fallen batteries." The fact that I have no idea what this means and can't stop singing it to myself is a good indication of how catchy Vest can be.

But again, weird yet catchy pop lyrics/singing is also nothing new in the world of independent music. See Craig Wedren singing about x-french t-shirts on Shudder to Think's Pony Express Record.

Stumped at this point, I read over my notes for each track (yes, I am a music dork who keeps notes when writing a review) and noticed that nearly every song I mentioned is comprised of one instrument "interrupting" another (the driving bass line and guitars threatening to explode on "Pearl's [Submarine #2]" instead dissolving into an "odd keyboard/piano solo"), or an instrument "coming out of nowhere" (my comment for the song "Eyes of the Night" includes the single line "Where'd that organ come from?"). What truly makes Drowaton unique is how it combines great music and singing in completely unexpected ways, jumping from instrument to instrument, word to word, melody to melody. While such style changes have the potential to be disorienting, Drowaton flows so well that upon first listen, I thought the first three songs were all different movements of the same song.

I should clarify that when I say that the Starlight Mints make pop music that sounds like nothing else, I specifically mean pop music that sounds like nothing else besides them. The beautiful psychedelic pop style of music on Drowaton will be familiar to anyone who has heard any of Starlight Mint's earlier albums. However, when that style is also defined as constantly changing, it is safe to say the listener will not be bored.