The Boston Globe (Dec. 28th 2001)

Now and Gwen

Consider Gwen Stefani, a bottle-blonde sprite whose videogenic persona blends wide-eyed shtick, bombshell glamour, and tough-chick rocker. It's a wacky combo - one that would seem to indicate a greater share of novelty appeal than artistic credibility.

Growing up in Anaheim, Calif., the shadow of Disneyland, explains a lot about Stefani and her band, No Doubt. The ska-pop group's breakthrough album, 1996's "Tragic Kingdom," was the musical equivalent of a mutant amusement park. The thrills were cockeyed, a technicolor-cartoon coaster ride. Stefani was Tinkerbell with teeny halters and a manic streak - enchanting, yes, but the whole thing felt too fizzy, too fast. As if Stefani couldn't stop whipping her vibrato to and fro if she wanted to. As if the electric parade was in overdrive, trampling the dwarves, and no one could find the off switch.

"Here's the short history," says Stefani, who does little to dispel her image by calling the writer at home 90 minutes before the scheduled interview time. (The photo shoot ended early, the limo is running late, and she hopes it's OK to talk now. Stefani really, really likes to talk.) "You spend three years in your backyard making an album and you don't think anyone will ever hear it. You believe that it will never come out, let alone get on the radio, let alone sell 15 million copies. `Tragic Kingdom' didn't get great reviews. It just sold a lot. The whole thing was magical and scary."

Mostly scary, as it turned out. So Stefani read Sylvia Plath and listened to Joni Mitchell, and out came the growing-pains album, last year's "Return to Saturn." A somber documentation of Stefani's conflicts about life and career choices, the album was a commercial disappointment.

"People were surprised we'd made a serious album," says Stefani, now 32, who realized later that she was going through a depression at the time. "We we were trying to prove it to ourselves that we could."

"Return to Saturn" may have been a downer, but it showed a side of Stefani that intrigued fans who had long harbored a suspicion that the singer's dubious fashion sense and watered-down fusion of punk, rock, reggae, and pop carried more weight than met the eye and the ear. No Doubt - which also includes bassist Tony Kanal, drummer Adrian Young, and guitarist Tom Dumont - went on tour with U2. Stefani was asked to guest on singles by Moby ("South Side") and Eve ("Let Me Blow Ya Mind"), and hearing her voice variously swathed in electronica and buoyed by hard hip-hop beats gave her more than just cred. It gave the members of the band the confidence to follow their hearts. The result is "Rock Steady," No Doubt's third major-label album, which was released last week.

"We found a sexier side to ourselves," says Stefani, who divides her time between a new house in the Hollywood Hills and the London home of her longtime beau, Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale. "We were sick of being in clubs dancing and not hearing our songs come on. So we simplified. We didn't use tons of chords and bridges. I mean, simple music is the hardest kind, like simple makeup or simple food. But everything happened really spontaneously. We started writing, and Tony [Stefani's ex-boyfriend, immortalized in the band's first hit, "Don't Speak"] said, `Let's go to Jamaica.' The next thing, you know we're there. And it was just so much fun. We did it so quickly. I am so in love with our record."

"Rock Steady" is an exuberant blast of Jamaican dancehall, club beats, and straight-ahead pop, and is No Doubt's best album. It's as fun-loving and fresh-sounding as its predecessor was painstakingly considered and overproduced. For Stefani, surrending to instinct was a revelation. "I realized that we didn't have to prove anything to anybody."

For her audience, it reveals that underneath the tough-glamorous- kitschy-girly image, Stefani is a tough, glamorous, kitschy girl - one who wears her heart on her sleeve and sweat pants with stiletto heels if it strikes her fancy. In short, she is what she once seemed only to aspire to being: an original in a world filled with followers. Which pretty much seals Stefani's standing as this year's ultimate rock chick.

Much of the lyrics on "Rock Steady" are Stefani's half of a conversation with Rossdale. "I do try really hard not to censor myself," she says. "I've changed things not to hurt people, especially my lover. But I have to write from my life. He understands, because he's a writer as well and he's writing about me. The hardest part, and it's getting harder and harder, is the separation. When you're 25, it's not so bad. But I think everyone knows I think about starting a family. I've wanted to have a kid since I hit puberty."

Produced by a slew of studio masters - among them Sly and Robbie, Nellee Hooper, Dave Stewart, Ric Ocasek, and William Orbit - these are bold, focused tracks that stretch the definition of a love song. "Waiting Room" is a jittery ode to anticipation co-written, sung, and produced with Prince; lusty "Hella Good" struts and shimmies all over the dance floor; "Making Out" is a synth-pop valentine to a distant lover. On reggae-rooted "Start the Fire," the delicate ballad "Running," and whimsical, paranoid "In My Head," both words and music frame Stefani with newfound clarity - suggesting that scattershot experimentation has turned to brave improvisation.

It seems remarkable, really, with the varied musical personalities involved in the recording process, that "Rock Steady" feels cohesive. And yet there is a palpable, defining presence that connects the disparate elements.

"It's us," explains Stefani. "Our muse, our record, our vibe. We recorded all the basic tracks in Tom's room. We trusted ourselves, and we inspired each other. I could feel them going, `Gwen knows what she's doing.' And it worked."