Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (June 28th 2000)
Gwen Stefani
If Gwen Stefani seems to be in a bit of an existential funk throughout No Doubt's new album, "The Return of Saturn," well, she has her reasons. An impending 30th birthday and a major dose of Sylvia Plath gave the high-spirited singer a case of the what's-it- all-mean blues, as she explains while on vacation in the English countryside with Bush lead singer Gavin Rossdale.
"Before `Tragic Kingdom' came out," she says, "I'd never been anywhere outside of Anaheim [Calif.], really, and then we toured around the world for 2 1/2 years, and I changed and grew so much that when I came back, I was like, `Wow! Who am I?' I can't explain it, but it was like, `Oh, no! I'm an adult, and this is what it feels like.' And that was a bit depressing."
Adding to the gloom was a growing fascination with Sylvia Plath, the tormented American poet.
"My boyfriend [Rossdale] told me to read `The Bell Jar,' and I was like, `OK,' and then I really got into her," she says. "I started reading her journals, and I was just shocked at how things flowed out of her and how she used just a couple of words to describe exactly how she was feeling. I was really inspired by that. But by that point, I was really getting depressed."
But unlike Plath, who killed herself at 30, Stefani threw herself into the task of writing "Simple Kind of Life" and other songs for "The Return of Saturn." The result is a slightly more moody and less ska-influenced album than "Tragic Kingdom," the 1995 disc that sold 15 million copies and transformed No Doubt from a Southern California cult act into one of pop music's biggest groups.
"Making this album," she says, "the band was really conscious about [creating] music that was more reflective of the mood of the lyrics," which wasn't the case on the previous disc.
"With `Tragic Kingdom,' you had all these uptempo songs with these downer lyrics, which made it sound like it had all this sarcasm."
Fans of the band's upbeat ska stylings might be thrown off by the `80s-inspired new wave sounds that dominate "Saturn."
But Stefani says, to her ears, No Doubt hasn't been a ska band in, like, 12 years.
"Being in that scene was cool," she says, "but we never wanted to be limited. We're always trying to experiment. And we always wanted to try to have our own sound, which doesn't fit in with all these manufactured bands today singing songs written by some 45-year-old man who's trying to find the right message to target some 12-year- old girl. We're our own boss -- we want to make our own music."
The band returns to Saturn yet again tomorrow at the I.C. Light Amphitheatre, Station Square. Music begins at 7 p.m. with Black Eyed Peas, LIT and Dynamite Hack.