Search - Spearmint :: Oklahoma

The Beauty and Terror of the Holidays

WrtnWrd | Northridge, CA USA | 01/13/2001

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Spearmint's second full length CD couldn't be better timed. Oklahoma! is a song cycle focusing on the beauties and terrors of the holidays. Sounds dodgy, I'll grant you, but this English pop quartet doesn't strain - this isn't The Wall or OK Computer, just nine varied songs that use a winter background for different explorations. There's the nameless black man nearly invisible in his small English town ("Oklahoma!") who ends up homeless in the streets; an estranged boy works up the nerve to speak to his irresponsible father on Christmas Day for "The Good of the Family"; a young couple grow apart after their first semester apart in "I Went Away"; a young girl laments the injustice of being born on Christmas Eve in "Happy Birthday Girl". Each song is a vignette fully observed then rendered flesh by solid English rock. And it beats the massacre of holiday perennials by all those oversinging baby divas."