Awkward and alluring in equal measures,
Gwen Stefani's 2004 solo debut,
Love.Angel.Music.Baby., did its job: it made
Gwen a bigger star on her own than she was as the lead singer of
No Doubt. With that established and her long-desired wish for a baby finally fulfilled, there was no rush for
Gwen to get back to her regular gig, so she made another solo album,
The Sweet Escape,
which expanded on what really sold her debut: her tenuous connections
to Californian club culture. There was always a sense of artifice behind
the turn-of-the-century makeover that brought
Gwen
from a ska-punk sweetheart to a dance club queen, but that doesn't mean
it didn't work at least on occasion, most spectacularly so on the
gloriously dumb marching-band rap of "Hollaback Girl," the
Neptunes production that turned
L.A.M.B. into a blockbuster. There, as on her duet with
Eve on "Let Me Blow Ya Mind,"
Gwen
made the transition into a modern-day material girl with ease, but when
she tried to shoehorn this ghetto-fabulous persona into her original
new wave girl character, it felt forced, nowhere more so than on the
Linda Perry written and produced "What You Waiting For."
Gwen doesn't make that mistake again on
The Sweet Escape
-- by and large, she keeps these two sides of her personality separate,
favoring the streets and nightclubs to the comfort of her new wave
home. Just because she wants to run in the streets doesn't mean she
belongs there; she continues to sound far more comfortable mining new
wave pop, as only a child of the '80s could. As always, it's those
celebrations of cool synths and stylish pop hooks that work the best for
Stefani, whether she's approximating the chilliness of early-MTV new romantics on "Wonderful Life," mashing
Prince and
Madonna on "Fluorescent," or lying back on the coolly sensual "4 in the Morning."
Only once on the album is she able to bring this
style and popcraft to a heavy dance track, and that's on the
irresistible
Akon-produced title track, driven by a giddy "wee-oh!" hook and supported by a nearly anthemic summertime chorus. Tellingly,
the Neptunes, the architects of her best dance cuts on
L.A.M.B., did not produce this track, but they do have a huge presence on
The Sweet Escape,
helming five of the 12 songs, all but one being tracks that weigh down
the album considerably. The exception is "U Started It," a light and
nifty evocation of mid-period
Prince,
with its lilting melody, silken harmonies, and pizzicato strings. It
sounds effortless and effervescent, two words that do not apply to their
other four productions, all skeletal, rhythm-heavy tracks that fail to
click. Sometimes, they're merely leaden, as on the stumbling
autobiographical rap "Orange County Girl"; sometimes, they're cloying
and crass, as on the rather embarrassing "Yummy"; sometimes they have an
interesting idea executed poorly, as on "Breakin' Up," a breakup song
built on a dying cell phone metaphor that's interesting in theory but
its stuttering, static rhythms and repetitive chorus are irritating in
practice. Also interesting in theory is the truly bizarre lead single,
"Wind It Up," where
the Neptunes
force fanfares and samples from The Sound of Music's "The Lonely
Goatherd" into one of their typical minimalist tracks, over which
Gwen
spouts off clumsy material-minded lyrics touting her fashion line and
her shape. Nothing in this track really works, but it's hard not to
listen to it in wonder, since its unwieldy rhythms and rhymes capture
everything that's currently wrong about
Stefani.
From the stilted production to the fashion fetish,
all the way down to her decision to rap on far too much of the album,
all the dance-pop here seems like a pose, creating the impression that
she's a glamour girl slumming on a weekend night -- something that her
self-proclaimed Michelle Pfieffer in Scarface "coke whore" makeover
showcased on the album's cover doesn't do much to dissuade. If the dance
production on
The Sweet Escape
were better, these hipster affectations would be easier to forgive, but
they're not: they're canned and bland, which only accentuates
Stefani's stiffness. These misfires are so grand they overshadow the many good moments on
The Sweet Escape,
which are invariably those songs that stay true to her long-standing
love of new wave pop (not coincidentally, these include every production
from her
No Doubt bandmate
Tony Kanal). These are the moments that give
The Sweet Escape
its sweetness, and while they may require a little effort to dig out,
they're worth the effort, since it proves that beneath the layers of
bling,
Gwen remains the SoCal sweetheart that has always been as spunky and likeable as she has been sexy.
tags: gwen stefani, the sweet escape, 2006, flac,
