Customer Reviews

Drowaton (Dig)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Mints have delivered consistently good, catchy, odd, orchestral pop on their last two albums. This album is even better than the previous two. They've been compared to the Kinks, the Flaming Lips... forget those comparisons. The Starlight Mints are unlike any other band I've heard. You need to give them a listen. Their songs are quirky, upbeat, fun, and well-written. The arrangements are smart and catchy. A wide range of instruments and odd-ball sounds are combined with reckless abandon... and it sounds really good. Give them a listen. They'll rock your world. In a weird sort of way.

Starlight Mints is a 5 piece band, bringing mostly quirky popsongs. Their earlier albums, 2000's Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of, and 2003's Built on Squares, were uneven affairs, but clearly showing promise. After a long wait, now comes the band's third album.

"Drowaton" (12 tracks, 40 min.) is musically again all over the map, but the big difference is that this time each track feels completely fleshed out, even though many songs are short, in the 2 and 3 minute range. The best tracks are found primarily in the second half of the album, including the instrumental "Rhino Stomp" (with a stomping rythm, as implied by the title), the acoustic "The Killer", the Clash-like "Eyes of the Night", and the closer "Sidewalk", a 60s-like romper with horns. The overall feel to is reminds me of current bands like Spoon and the Greenhornes. Overall, "Drowaton" is a great album, which marks the great leap forward for Starlight Mints.

This album (which is spelled "Not a word" backwards) was released on the excellent label Barsuk Records, which houses other outstanding artists like Mates of State, Smoosh, Aqueduct and John Vanderslice, just to name a few. I haven't had an opportunity to see Starlight Mints in concert yet, but I'm looking forward to them coming to or near Cincinnati sometime soon.

Sounding a lot like Styx covering Pavement Songs with Bowie as the lead singer, these guys have got to be huge in another dimension. Not a bad song on the cd - just well written, well played, INTERESTING music. Probably should have given it a 5 star, probably did in the other dimension. I would definately buy it again if someone took this copy, and thats about the best I can say about any CD.

Whatever weird bug the Flaming Lips have, their fellow Oklahomites appear to have it too. Especially the Starlight Mints. In their third album "Drowaton," the Mints overwhelm listeners with their colourful, forceful pop tunes and oddball lyrics -- they sound like an insane group of musical leprechauns.

It opens with a fuzzy, intermittent riff, joined in by a brass chorus, colourful chorus and some solid drums. It's a bit hard to make out what Allan Vest is singing in his eerie falsetto, but you can catch snatches of lyrics: knives, cold hearts, and "words that burn, burn my soul."

Then it proceeds to the whistling and guitars of "Torts," with Vest announcing solemnly, "All you lawyers and judges/and reading rooms/this song goes out to you/as your counselor wishes, and I can prove/everyone travels in twos!" It sounds like a song from a demented children's TV show.

From there in, they try out every kind of pop imaginable: bombastic piano-rock, energetic indiepop, uneasy bluesy pop with classical violins, ominously heavy "Rhino Stomp" living up to its name, a folky little acoustic tune, wailing psych-punk, and sweeping psychedelic tunes with tipsy vocals. Right up to the parade-like feeling of the sweeping acid epic "Sidewalk."

Part of the charm of the Starlight Mints has always been that they were always so incredibly colourful. But with "Drowaton," they take up the colour a notch -- everything in this album seems bigger, brighter and more effusive than ever before. And that's saying something.

As they've always done, classical violin strains are mingled in with indie riffs and lots of shimmering synth, molded into some truly brilliant pop tunes that seem to overflow from the speakers. And the Mints try out all sorts of music here -- punk, folk, a touch of blues, and lots and lots of shimmering psychpop -- with mostly successful results.

Vest's voice gets a good workout here -- he goes falsetto in the first song, but gets to sound a bit more normal (and freaked out) in "Seventeen Devils" and the rollicking punk "Eyes of the Night." And the songs are almost as bizarrely appealing as the music -- full of lightning strikes, pearls in submarines, the slow development of a murderer. ("A killer comes, a killer grows/he walks into a killer's home/and says goodnight to the moon...")

The Starlight Mints are utterly brilliant in their third full-length album, a collection of larger-than-life psychpop and wild musical journeys. A must-have.

Sort of 60's pop with a bit of Spoon, Bowie and OingoBoingo thrown in; And I suppose Flaming Lips to a certain extent, but maybe that's because I've learned that they're also Okies.

But this is an album of five stars.

Listened in the car this weekend to this release.Very catchy ,excellent tunes,highly recommended!!!!