MTV News (March 10th 1998)

No Doubt About It, New LP In The Works

After taking six months off from touring in support of their 13 million-selling breakthrough album Tragic Kingdom, ska-poppers No Doubt are preparing to enter the studio to record their next album, according to guitarist Tom Dumont.

But when they will surface with a completed work depends on how the creative juices are flowing, he added. "We're gonna take as long as it takes to make a great record, so if we can't finish it by this year, it won't be out 'til next year," Dumont said recently during a SonicNet chat.

The Southern California band is hoping to have the new album out before the end of this year, Dumont explained. A spokesperson at the band's label, Interscope, said the group recently rented a house in which to work on writing songs for the new album, but a release date has not yet been placed on the schedule.

"We're in the writing and demoing process now," Dumont said, adding that the group experimented with its sound during the downtime following its last tour by using drum loops and computer technology in coming up with new material. But he acknowledged, "It turns out it's a lot easier to just play them and record them as a band using real instruments, so I guess that was a failed attempt."

Noting that their success unleashed a tidal wave of similarly ska-happy punk/pop bands, Dumont said No Doubt's fourth album would not likely be a "projection from where Tragic Kingdom left off. You won't see us going back and trying to compete with all the new ska bands out there."

The tongue-in-cheek exploration of inter-band stresses in the video for the band's smash hit "Don't Speak" -- the male bandmembers were portrayed as being bitter about singer Gwen Stefani's special treatment by the press -- addressed a genuine pitfall to be avoided. These days, Dumont said, the group's priority is keeping personal relationships intact.

"The only real stress comes from our relationships within the band and spending the time to make sure those relationships [don't succumb to] pressure from any outside sources," he said. What helped alleviate some of those strains, Dumont added, were the few months that the members took off following their exhausting series of promotional tours. It helped return them to the "old times again, and the pressures of being together have all faded."

No Doubt have achieved tremendous success, but there is one dream that the members of the band have not yet realized: to perform with childhood heroes Madness -- the legendary English two-tone ska band.

Although Dumont said plans call for a May show in Hawaii with Madness, a spokesperson for Interscope said nothing definite has been announced yet.