Starlight Mints have mastered the art of the recording studio. Their latest album, Drowaton, contains guitars, pianos, synths, strings, horns, percussion, “tra la las,” and fancy-sounding gizmos, often all at the same time. These many layers never blend into a thick sound; rather, the instruments skillfully weave around one another. The album’s texture remains clear and accessible at all times.

The Mints come from the same state as the Flaming Lips, a fact they like to point out. The two bands are similar: both compose fun, complicated, creative pop arrangements with surreal lyrics. But they aren’t quite as alike as Starlight Mints would think. The Lips have always distinguished their music with vulnerability and warmth; Drowaton is much icier. It’s a grit-less, immaculate album of carefully orchestrated parts. Even the dissonance is pleasant.

Because of this, I didn’t like Drowaton at first. I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was an album of mostly unremarkable songs hidden beneath a mountain of bells and whistles. It struck me as the product of a bunch of kids, too smart for their own good, wanking in an expensive studio with nothing substantial to say.

But the album eventually won me over. Once I got past the rather numbing whole and absorbed the parts, suddenly I was able to love it. I was wrong to dismiss anything on this album as merely “bells and whistles.” The complex production is far from random: it carefully enhances the mood at almost every turn. A discombobulated piano and exaggerated whistle magnify “Torts” from a Kinks-like waltz into a Saturday morning cartoon. “The Bee” is pumped and nerdy, and a perfect keyboard tone conjures The Go! Team, if they were dorks. On “Rosemarie,” a hollow keyboard, paranoid strings, and high buzzing waves work together to build a fun sort of menace.

Drowaton is a very good pop album. It’s quirky, deep, and enjoyable. They’ve mastered pop arrangement in the style of The Flaming Lips; but now it’s time for them to turn to The Lips once more and tackle emotion and humanity. For pop geeks like Starlight Mints, this will be a much more difficult task. But if they can do it, we may have something truly special on our hands.

Reviewed by David Koenig